Quote of the day

"Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue."
Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941)

How's your job?

Horny-keting

Well, we all know that sex makes sell. So the guys from PublicisNet in Paris have decided to have a little round up on the various commercials and spoofs that are using Blow Jobs as a viral hook on the web. Here is an example, and there are many more here:



Re-routing from sex to culture.

Why am I talking about this in this blog about cultural differences? Because sex makes sell and apparently it makes also read. Many people arrive on this blog because of my kinky articles about "oral sex with a fork", "end of a myth", "insectophily" or "chopping your carrot"... You dirty perverts! But if you land on this site and decide to have a read through in spite of the deception to find no nude or free porn pictures in these pages, you might take away something from you readings... For instance, did you know that a blow job in German slang is said "Französich" (= French)? Of course, this can lead to some awkward situations when some fellow citizens ask German Frauleine if they like French, from a linguistic perspective of course.

So be aware... And work out your linguistic skills, they could be useful. Maybe even more than your mother (f**ker) tongue.

Chocoholic

Sniff-Sniff vs. Miam-Miam.

I have already talked at length about the Axe/Lynx brand and their ability to engage their audience through a consistent proposition: seduction. Well the Unilever brand has just released a new TV commercial which capitalises on a consumer insight: women cannot resist to chocolate (this insight has been carefully researched at home by the way):

Is the global FMCG group about to start some cross-branding? What about an anti-perspirant flavoured after Wall's Vienneta? Or a grooming kit with Ben&Jerry's chocolate cream? Such products could sound appetizing, as long as they stay away from any joint-activity with... Marmite!

Hail to the chocolate.

Chocolate is critical, not only for women, but also for French men. It is as important to us as beer is to English males. As a matter of fact, we do not talk in France of a six-pack, but of a chocolate bar. So chocolate is not only about taste buds, it is also about appearance, and if you refer to some studies it would also have an influence on your Psyche. As you can read in this very well-documented site dedicated to chocolate:

Placebo-controlled trials suggest chocolate consumption may subtly enhance cognitive performance. As reported by Dr Bryan Raudenbush (2006), scores for verbal and visual memory are raised by eating chocolate. Impulse-control and reaction-time are also improved.

By adding some chocolate scents to their deodorant, does Unilever tries to create a new product category? I have already mentioned nutriceuticals, this combination of nutriment and medicine. Are we seeing the birth of Groomingurgitation? After all, so many things are becoming eatable those days: g-strings, cars, manga heroes, mobile phones... So why not grooming products?

The story of life

Sorry, but I could not resist to share this... puzzling vision of family happiness and joy. So if you are still looking at something to replace what you initially bought to your children for Christmas, this might just well be the right choice. And there are more on their website.

Beyond the gore and macabre teddy there is a story, like every toys convey. This time it is not about Winnie the Pooh and friendship, nor the story of Goldilocks and privacy, but it is the story of life... Certainly less cute than the Lion King's musical, but with the same moral: everyone, even the greatest predator, shall die one day, just try to avoid old ladies, they tend to accelerate the rotation of the circle of life.

Choose your language

Bon anniversary

This January I am celebrating my 18th month in the UK, a year and a half living, breathing, working, speaking, writing, blogging and even dreaming in English. Of course before my arrival on the UK soil, I had already lived in English-speaking countries whilst studying or starting my career. And I had come and visited the British Isles many times as a tourist. However this is the first time that I am truly immersed in the British society (which since the fall of the Empire can no longer be a synonym to the previously evoked destinations).

My first reflex as an alien in London was to focus on the natives, eventually on their antipodean cousins, and to study their endogenous culture and differences. I wanted to acclimate and blend into the country that I had adopted, but before all to stay away from the French community. But as you can have read in one of my previous articles, avoiding French fellow citizens in London is as difficult as finding a flat-tummied pal in a pub.

But still, I think that I have managed to almost perfectly adapt and cope with the cultural choc that you might face when discovering this country. And, I am even trying my luck with the art of understatement... My immersion has been so efficient that it led me to experience some puzzling situations when having said something, I could not really tell whether I had spoken in English or French. Other example: whilst vaguely listening to some security instructions, I suddenly wondered why the loudspeaker was repeating itself, until I realised that it was just a French translation, and not an iteration of the initial English speech. My mind seems to have activated the English auto-pilot option, and this language as a second default mode.

Familiar foreign languages

The English language has never been a barrier to me. I even remember discovering some words at school for the first time, and immediately know what they meant... I tend to have a great affinity with foreign languages, but English has always outweighed the other. Maybe because it is so simple a language.

For us Latins, French, Spanish and Italian are so close that it is very easy to pick up. You can even kind of understand two Italian without having ever had a class of Italian. German on the contrary is completely different a language: different vocabulary, different syntax, different accentuation, different pronunciation, etc. And yet, I am tempted to say that German is even an easier language to learn... I can already see rolling eyes, and even some threatening fists from pupils struggling with Goethe's language. Blasphemy!!!

But think about it, this language is ideal to learn: little exceptions in the grammar, a consistent approach of the word constructions... Fair enough, it is a hell of a work to get a grip on the gender, even for us in Latin countries where we already play around with masculine and feminine. But then, once you have that in mind, and you know the few rules you are almost certain to avoid any mistake. Whereas in the Latin languages, the rule is that there are no rules... These are languages rich of their exceptions. In other words, German is hard to learn, easy to master, whilst Latin languages are easy to learn, impossible to master.

Frenglish.

What about English in all that? Well, English is somewhere in between. So would you be ready to trade your mother tongue for an easier language like English? Jean-Claude Vandamme has been ridiculed in French-speaking Europe for the interview he gave once back in his native Belgium: he could no longer articulate proper sentences without adding some English in it (cocaine helped to refine the character of the now obsolete Hollywood icon). Ridiculous, but not that much when you have lived in a foreign country.

I am not there yet, however I realise every time that I go home that I suffer from a pauperisation of my vocabulary. If you don't use a language you will notice that you lose your ability. A language is like a muscle, it needs to be trained not to atrophy. Fortunately, my wife is French, and in her blood runs some family fluids that tend to ease the tongue... She speaks all the time, especially on the phone, and I benefit from it to a certain extend. She is my personal trainer, a coach who should avoid me to become a JCVD...

But I have some other back-ups in case she is away. During my Saturday class of photography, I realised that my camera was set in French. Having a look at it closely, I realised that my iPOD, my phone and my PS3 had been set to French too. This is quite interesting because, although I would be totally at ease to use these technical devices in English (it would even be more practical in some instances), I have configured the language setting to my mother tongue. Is this some kind of a reinsurance towards the potential frustration and difficulties of technology? I am not sure, but I have decided to turn the whole lot back to English, as a sign of my determination to embrace my host culture. Voilà! (Oups... sorry for this last French digression, I promise, I won't do it again).

Quote of the day

"If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Computer Generated Tourism

January is the month of yearly reviews, a month during which companies and journalists look back at the previous 12 months and consider the highlights of the year and try to isolate trend and learnings. Back in December I came across Allocine podcast, a website that provides everything about cinema, from trailers to schedules to forums and news. I immediately subscribed to both the British and French editions and have since been catching up with the latest movie gossips while in the tube.

One mouse-click to Paris

Last week, in its daily show, Allocine was coming back on the 2007 box-office results. I then realised that the feature which outperformed all movies in France last year was Ratatouille, the CGI movie by Disney's Pixar. Beyond the cute little story about tolerance, self-confidence and culinary art, this animation has been doing a great job to rehabilitate long outcast rats (which became the #1 pets in 2007) and to promote Paris through magnificent scenes. I must admit that Pixar artists did really a great job to magnify the beauty of the City of Lights, and even managed to make me feel home-sick for a while...

But the little rat was not the only cartoon to make its way to the top of the charts: the yellow icons of the Generation X did a great job too. Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, a.k.a. the Simpsons, were not to be missed when they made their way from the TV screen to the cinemas. Some could argue that Hollywood did a little too much to promote this film with their advertising, experiential marketing, PR, digital communication... Did they overkill it? I don't think so, but you must acknowledge that they were everywhere. Even in Paris, for the Fashion Week.

The Yellow Wave

In 2007, The Devil could no longer wear Prada: it was so last year. So he must have read Harper’s Bazaar August 07 edition to renew his wardrobe. The magazine partnered with Matt Groening to promote the highlights of this year catwalks. And the results is fantastic: how does Homer look in Karl Lagerfeld? Does Jean-Paul Gaulthier suit Marge? And what about Lanvin necklaces on Lisa?

"The Simpsons Go to Paris with Linda Evangelista" from Harper's Bazaar
(more similar illustrations by Julius Preite here, and real life collection here)

So it seems that 2007 was all about animation and being seen in Paris if you wanted to be a cinematographic success. And yet, another cartoon made a "carton" last year in France (sorry for the pun... "faire un carton", literally "hit the cardboard target" or be a smashing hit). But this one did not take place in Paris, nor was it yellow, and it was certainly not generated by thousands of rendering machine... It is a black and white animation describing the true story of an outspoken Iranian girl, Marjane Astrapi, forced to leave her country by the Islamic Revolution and the Iraq-Iran war.

Although more modest than the two American blockbusters', I think Persepolis success was a great performance... Not only was this film acclaimed by the industry with several awards in Cannes, Toronto, NY and possibly at the Academy Awards where it will represent France, but it also met a great response from the public. Politically-engaged, artistic independent films still have a word to say... And that is exciting.

So if you could not see the film in cinema, you will soon be able get the DVD or if you prefer to read the original comic novel it is available on Amazon (sorry, I literally read it in a night, not having time to add it to the "On my bedside table" section of this blog):

The choc of the words

For decades French magazine Paris-Match has been known for its slogan: "the weight of words, the choc of pictures", a motto depicting its editorial philosophy. Since I arrived in the UK, I am everyday stunned by the journalistic choices of British newspapers, in particular their terminology (I will ignore Page 3 for the time being).

Worded to choc.

In local papers, words seem not to be weighed, but rather outweighed, so to say. There is a constant dramatization of the facts in order to exaggerate their importance and create an impact. This "superlativization", if I may use this neologism, tends also to be Manichean, with a strong tendency to darken the picture. Everything is either white or black, and there is always little room for nuances. In that instance, finding the right word is not finding the most accurate to describe a specific situation, but the most impactful. And often the more sordid the better.

I played a little game the other day, and highlighted in one of these newspapers all the words that were out of proportion. When I was done, I flipped again through the pages and realised that most pages were marked. Slaughter, terror, blaze, horror, etc... were only a few example of the sensational vocabulary used to depict unfortunately ordinary events like a car accident or a domestic fire.

This shades an interesting light on the British culture, and by consequence on the cultural disparities between our two countries.

Black and White, and everything in between.

First, there is this Saxon addiction for binary. I already wrote a note on that topic when I realised that the local plumbing remembered me of how German tackle love... French uses the expression "le sens des demi-mesures" (the sense of half-measures). This relates to one's ability to adapt one's behaviour or vocabulary to the situation. To come back to the above-mentioned colourful analogy, it is about using a great diversity of grey shades between the black and the white. To that extend, British journalism provides to the readership what it is receptive to: clear statements about good and evil.

Second insight is about the need for emotions. To that extend the British people is not only Saxon, it is Anglo-Saxon. While German readers expect newspapers to relate facts and only facts, British readers expect more from these sheets of paper. They want to find content that engages their heart, and not only their head. As a consequence, the use of polarised language is the insurance to trigger a consensual, emotional response. Strong words generate a common feeling amongst the entire readership, whilst nuances are a source of complexity. They create divergence: everyone agrees on what black or white is, but when you start referring to light dark grey, everyone has a different perception. So journalists tend to level their discourse to address the larger audience and rallying them under a common set of basic emotions. Some could argue that these words are used to engage, to attract the attention, to get the reader involved... No body bother about tempered water, but freezing or boiling water provoke a reaction. Ultimately I think that this leads to the trivialization of words which are losing their primary sense. Can we really harness under the same word of "Horror" what happens in Iraq and a dog being ran over in Yorkshire by a truck. No offence to the widowing bitch.

This simplification of the message is not only visible in the press. It is also present in advertising, and in fact highly valued. Many advertising experts actually claim that American and British advertising are the best in the world because they deliver a simplistic message with no frills (whilst other countries tend to express more circumvolutory, tortuous though equivalent messages). Funny enough, some British creatives even complain that their domestic approach is sometimes too complex or sophisticated compared to the US... But after all this is the aim of advertising conveying a simple message, "buy it", in an appealing way.

So what should we say back in France? Maybe that our detractors are right, that we are intellectualising too much. That the Age of Enlightenment is way behind us and that we should stop philosophising about everything from the cost of a baguette to the number of taps on a sink... And yet if I was stopping to think about what is going on around me, you would not be reading these lines ;-)

2008: Tribute to 2007

For me 2007 has been influenced by several colours:

• Orange who takes a lot of my private time in the shape of a traveling wife.
• Black&Magenta which was in fact the colour combination which ruled the day when the above mentioned lady became indeed my "wife".
• And finally Blue, White and Red of both the tricolor French flag and the Union Jack whose nations have been a constant source of inspiration for this blog

As a result, when it came to welcome the new year, I felt I had to pay tribute to these polychromatic symphony. And voila:

Thanks to advertising agency Fallon, for their inspiring campaign for Orange.

Season's misunderstandings

This week-end I had a lovely stay at a French friend in the Southern part of England. Our conversation inevitably slipped to the topic "language, mistranslation and other misunderstandings". This mate shared with us some of the awkward experiences he faced since he arrived in the UK, and one of them was quite funny so I decided to mention it in this blog.

Frenglish.

First, let me share with you an observation that will help understand why my friend was fooled by his own language... Due to the medieval influence of William The Conqueror and his fellow Normans, Latin has infiltrated English. As a result, complex words in both French and English share the same roots, and often the same orthography. And the longer, the more complex a word is. We thus observed (and that has to be verified) that 7-and-above-letter word in French tends to have its equivalent on this side of the Channel. So sometimes, when you are short of a word, you can always try your luck and pronounce the French word with some kind of an English accent, and it might well do the trick. The reciprocal approach should work too. So next time you go to Paris and struggle, have a go... Just don't think too complex, after all not all the bar tenders have a PhD in Literature...

Now, if this trick does not work, you can also try literal translation. However, this is a last chance attempt, because with our flourished language, the translation rarely matches. You see me coming, this is exactly what happened to my friend!

International pub talks

As a keen water sport lover, he wanted to explain to a co-worker that he was looking for a place to kitesurf. The only trouble was that he could not remember how to say "kite" in English, which was quite critical in his situation as you can imagine. Kite in French is not seven letter long, damn it, option 1 was down, and after having tried his best Marcel Marceau's imitation, he decided to translate the French word literally.

Kite in French is "Cerf-Volant", literally "Flying-Deer"... You can certainly picture yourself, in a pub, with someone asserting that he wants to go surfing with a flying deer. Well, unless you are talking to a round-bellied guy dressed in red and with a long white beard, it is very unlikely that you can figure out what the guy is talking about. And neither did his colleague, until my friend finally recalled the proper word.

Translating your own language

Such an experience is not only funny, it is also enriching. It forces you to challenge your own language. Why on Earth are we calling a Kite a flying-deer in French? Was that because they were initially built with deer skins? Well, before the (mobile) Internet-era all this would have led to endless speculations, but with a 3G-enabled device, a few clicks on wikipedia and you have the answer on the go. And it was quite interesting an answer...

In France too, we have foreign language influences in our vocabulary. We even have influences from since-disappeared languages such as the Occitan Language, once spoken in the southern part of France. In this language, kites were called sèrp-volanta, referring to flying-snakes (which makes more sense visually, especially when you have the original Chinese models in mind). But the words sèrp (snake) and cerf (deer) with its silent "f" sound very similar, so a mistake was made when it was "translated" into common French.

This is how I have learned that the deers are not really flying except on December 24th. Merry Christmas dear reader, and happy new year dear reindeer.

Carpe Diem, bite the Apple

There are some speeches that are inspiring... This one by Apple's Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005 is definitely. Enjoy the dots, the passion and the death!

Londoniaz 1850m

The French literature features a novelist from whom I feel close to. Not that I have an ounce of his talent (although my French teacher often criticized my prose as "as circumvolutory" as his, and this was obviously no compliment), but because he came up with some concepts which are so true to me. And even proved so earlier today.

In Search of Lost Time.

Marcel Proust is a writer, born in the XIXth century in Paris, who focused his writing on memories and time (again nothing to compare to my article on the same topic though). A psychological attitude is even referenced after his name: the Proust effect or involuntary memory. The later has been materialised in a novel where the hero, walking by a patisserie, was brought back to his childhood memories by the mere smell of a freshly-backed madeleine. We commonly name this phenomenon "Madeleine de Proust" (Proust's Madeleine): the activation of deep-buried feelings or memories by an exogenous event.

As mentioned above, this happened to me this afternoon again. No I have not eaten a madeleine (I am trying to put off weight before the Christmas season really kicks off). But making my way through to the nearest tube station, I came across a street where a short-lasting forest of Christmas trees has arisen. A few seconds at the corner of this street, and I was gone. Back there. In my mountains...

A breeze of fresh air.

For me the smell of the evergreens, of their sap... brings me immediately back to my mountains where as a child I was wandering in the snowed forest, looking for our victim. The tree that will throne in the middle of our chalet with its lot of balls and decorations. But don't get me wrong, I am neither nostalgic, nor home-sick. After all, there are so many things happening in London that evoke my home, that I feel at home here. Food, skiing, deers, now the evergreens... As soon as I will find some Chartreuse in pubs and stop sipping my own reserve, then I think we will be there: London will be on the French map of Alps! Because as they say in the latest (pseudo-trendy, though crappy) advert for the Tourism Board of the French Alps... "J'adore la montagne" (I luv' da mountains):

Yogurt singing (part 2)

I already wrote an article about "yogurt singing", a practice that consists in singing approximate lyrics on a foreign song or in using onomatopoeias to reproduce sounds that come to our non-educated hear. An example? Let's say that the original lyrics is "wanna gain freedom", a nice politically-engaged line, now in yogurt that could become "one again three four" (don't get it? read it fast, with a strong French accent, and you will end up getting it).

A spoonful of notes.

The singer tries to foul his audience, or even himself, that he can sing. That helped a lot of wannabes in the sixties, but now, with English taught in French primary schools, it becomes more and more difficult to make a living with yogurt's (unless it is organic, sugar- and fat-free, but this is a digression). In other words, the only yogurt users are nowadays individuals in their bathroom with only a plastic duck as an audience.

Ken touched this.

But the insight remains intrinsically true. When you don't master a language, you tend to refer to the few words that you know and think you recognise them. It is not a matter of understanding what you speak, it is a matter of reinsuring yourself that you are capable of something... Berlitz has just released a new ad on the web using a very nice graphic design execution, but before all relaying on this market truth. Strategically right, well executed and supported by the cult MC Hammer, Man... I lov'that!



Edit: the MC Hammer ad has been deleted, but the same idea has been developed on the La Bamba soundtrack. arriba!

From scapegoat to superhero

Recently, as I have been looking for my next job after year and a half in web agencies, I was regularly asked what would be the greatest achievement of the Internet. This question has been haunting me for a while, and I recent night out with fellow bloggers, Sandrine and Raphael, has provided me with the first elements of an answer.

A revolution, but which revolution?

I don't think that the greatest revolution of the worldwide web are social networks and their ability to empower common people with a powerful communication tool. I am convinced that it is not either the possibility to visualise information or emotions through new taxonomies like tag clouds, or the magnificent work by Jonathan Harris like wefeelfine or universe.

No, I think that the major achievement of the Internet is more behavioural than technological or social. Internet indeed allowed to transform nerds into inspiring people! For years they have been ridiculed, they were thrown stones at... And suddenly their vision of the world was valued millions, and their sex appeal (or at least social appeal) followed the ascending curve of their bank account value.

Call me Sir Geek

Today, being a geek is no longer an insult, it is even somehow hype and inspiring. Belonging to the RSS feed subscribers who read their latest blog posts on their 3G+ devices whilst watching streamed content on their sopcast players signifies almost being part of a cast of superheroes with super social powers... They are on the front cover of glossy magazines, interviewed on TV and newspapers. Or am I just making this up just to reinsure myself that I am no outcast.

But then, if we listen to this anticipation video, the geeks could even one day become semi-gods... That kind of interest me, if my current job hunt was not successful:

Sublim subliminal

The first time I heard of subliminal images was probably in the 80s after I watched a Columbo episode where some film editor killed a rival by influencing through hidden images in a film. Since then, I have paid a lot of attention to this technique which is, as you would agree, quite puzzling.

Thanks lieutenant!

What is a subliminal image? This is an image you don't consciously perceive but which will be processed by your brain. For instance, the classical cinema camera used to shoot at a speed of 24 image per second. In fact, you don't really need these 24 images to give back the smooth movement of reality: your eyes capture them all and your brain process them all to give you the feeling of a continuity whilst it is in fact the apposition of 24 still images. So now, if you substitute one of the images of this desert scenery by one single image of chilled glass of a fizzy refreshing drink, then expert says that your brain is tempted to unconsciously produce a stimulus of thirst and a predisposition to go for a lemonade... And that is how the bad guy manage to kill his victim in that Columbo episode.

Politics, sex...

Obviously such influential practices are not hard facts. They are hard to prove as they are highly dependant on the context in which they are used. But still, subliminal images have marked the last decades with some major examples. Like porn in children cartoons! You might remember the 35th Disney cartoon "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and its sexy character Jessica Rabbit. Well to increase her appeal, some animators decided to add some subliminal image of Jessica naked in the motion picture. This true legend was then a major factor of sales when the film went out on since-disappeared Laser Discs because it was at that time the only public technology allowing you to truly visualise a film frame by frame.

Another example of subliminal images made a politico-media scandal after 1988 presidential elections in France. Francois Mitterrand was elected for the second time in a row, and some experts identified some puzzling images on the state-owned channel Antenne 2 (now named France 2). The introduction of the news programme was an animated three-dimensional "a2" rotating in the air until the speaker was on screen. A careful look at this 3D animation revealed that there was a face which could well be Mitterrand's was blended in the metallic texture of the figure.
When you know that a) the regulation forbids subliminal images, b) candidates are due to an equal speech time and c) Mitterrand was said to have a harsh hand on media, especially on national TV, you can easily conclude, as many did, that this image was not here by chance. So unfair practice from an influential political leader and president or not, we will never know the truth. On the other hand, during the 2000 American election campaigns, the intentions were clearer. During a TV spot for George W. Bush, the future president was presenting his opponent's programme under his own light. And to increase the negative perception of Al Gore, some subliminal messages were displayed alongside, like this one, briefly but clearly insulting the Democ....rats!
Look me in the eyes.

The influence of these images has not been scientifically proven though. The French ophthalmologic website Ophtasurf reports that:

A Canadian TV network has run an experimentation displaying 300 times a subliminal call-to-action during a popular show. The message was encouraging viewers to "Call now" but no significant upraise in calls was noticed. Psychologist Ahmed Channouf from University of Provence in France explained that too complex messages have no chance to be understood properly by a brain in milliseconds, and would consequently have no impact on behaviours.

Several scientists confirm that there is no possibility that such a brief visual stimulation would influence consumers to buy a product against their will. Eventually it could increase a propensity to act, but not alter the predispositions.

Or couldn't it? Well, this post was prompted by a visual stimulus... I have seen on the Internet an excerpt from E4 programme presented by illusionist Derren Brown. This is obviously not a scientific demonstration, but interesting and puzzling enough, don't you think?

Funny enough, when I saw this film for the first time, I spotted the harp, and this made me think of Guinness. Isn't that another proof of the influence of symbols? Not sure, but why not have a beer...