marketing and branding

lifestyle zone

I was answering interview questions for a lifestyle blog the other day. Details will follow when the interview goes life. And, like most of us, I think I am an interesting topic and love to talk about myself. That was the easy part. But, as it is a lifestyle blog and as blogs tend to work with pictures, I was asked for pictures to accompany the feature. I was looking down on me and tried to figure out what style I have.

Realizing that my style is blue jeans and a white T-shirt I got into troubles. A sales rep in one of the many jeans stores in NY trying to talk  me into buying a jeans came up with the flattering comment “classical”. Having a classical style is for sure way better than normal. Let’s face it: Who wants to be normal?

So I was looking down my normal style and tried to come up with a visual that turns a normal style into a classical context. Today’s picture shows you the result. I put my jeans and a white T-shirt onto a painting that I did of LA, looking south-east from the hills over Griffith Park, where I go jogging when in Hollywood. The picture is nice. The colors of the jeans with the label fit with the blue sky softened by cirrostratus clouds and the orange dusty horizon.

Totally happy with the result I continued taking pictures of objects that I own and that are part of my style, putting them onto various paintings. Bike helmet, sneakers and what I found in my backpack. I wonder whether the lifestyle blog will publish them. I was happy: Narcis has found a new mirror.  I was also amazed about what came out of my backpack. I guess what a woman’s handbag is a man’s backpack. I found perfume vials in all possible pockets. One trial dilution that I have been searching for, and had to re-dilute because I did not found the vial, reappeared from the big dark abyss, aka backpack.

There was some time yesterday, while drawing Greek statues in the drawing class which is incredibly difficult, to continue thinking about lifestyle and how important the image of the person is that stands for a brand. In this industry the normal guys are rare. It is comparable to fashion. And, maybe, like haute couture is essentially dead,  high perfumery is essentially dead. And there’s a reason for this and that. And: For whatever reason, consumers want a share of the glamour that designers, billionaires and other important people come with. Unfortunately, we life in a world deprived of glamour. And if the brand owners (or better: representants) are not rich or given this extra dose of beauty, or if they think whatever they represent is not enough, some brand owners wallow in “art” and creative contexts, and do crazy things just to be not normal, sometimes with snakes sometimes without.

And it works.

I have decided that it is time to get a snake. One that fits into my backpack.