I just opened the front door and this man said “would you be interested in buying my sticker that reads ‘no junk please’?

He explained that he had began his sticker business because of the recession. He would be grateful for any loose change I cared to give towards the sticker.

So I gave him some change and started talking to him to find about how he ended up selling the stickers?

He told me he was fifty years old. In addition to being a bus driver and having spent time in the army, he had worked for seventeen years in the casino business.

There he started as a Car Jockey. The clients liked him. So did the management. He eventually was made Head Receptionist. His charm encouraged clients to to give hime a fiver here or there just to call a cab or ensure that, if for example, they were in party, he led them to their seats and so on.

The Casino were happy – because the customers felt at home.

However, after seventeen years new management took out all the old staff and bought in their own people.

The casino business is a shady vindictive affair. The new management saw to it that the old staff would find it difficult to get work with any competitors.

He felt betrayed but still had seventeen years of memories and moments.

He told me of how he had seen people lose millions in the casino.

One man used to spend around £40k a night – and lose it. Then one day, the man’s luck changed and he won £100k. He gave everyone a £50 tip and (the man who was telling me the story) drove the winner home in a complimentary Rolls – for which he received a further £50 tip.

The next night the winner was back and lost all the money, never to get that winning streak again. But he somehow seemed to get a kick out of turning to the other gamblers and saying, “well, that’s life.”

The conversation turned to how business was faring selling the stickers?

He said that the elderly are always happy to offer 10p or so for the sticker. If they looked poor, he would give them the sticker for free and wish them well.

Many people commend him on his initiative – but when it came handing over any change, they close the door. Or may get into a conversation, but at the point of payment, suddenly claim they didn’t speak English.

Each sticker costs him 10p and he makes up to  £1 on a sticker.

Some people – generally in working class areas – occasionally spot him weeks later and give him £2 for the sticker as they felt embarrassed that initially they only offered any small change in the house.

I asked him where was the worse area to work in? He told me had worked all over london, walking the streets selling stickers, from Shepherds Bush to Harrow…
But the worse places were like Pinner or Moor Park – where the driveways had three Mercs or BMWs and the homes were clearly worth millions.

Whenever he would ask the rich for any spare change for his sticker enterprise, 9 out of 10 times they closed the door in his face.

I asked him why he thought that was? “Well you can’t be as rich as them if you spend the money.” He answered.

I then thought about his job in the very glamourous casino where people were eager to sit next to others and night after night, smile as they lost on a spin of a wheel – – to laugh out ‘well that’s life’ to their fellow gamblers . However when it came to any loose change for a sticker didn’t waste a penny of their wealth.

And people ask why the young who are surrounded by messages telling them that they can have it all – because everyone is entitled to it. – feel disconnected and live for the moment rioting and looting for FlatScreens.

Or why Apple has become even wealthier than Exxon, selling devices  which give the full picture of life on a nine inch screen, and whose consumers  look forward to the next model featuring even higher definition pictures of people who proudly display their Wasteman shots on Facebook.

I don’t believe the rioters have specific political agenda – why should they?  Who cares “Here comes the new boss – same as the old boss.”

Reality for them is survival of the fittest, the right to respect and recognition that has to be fought for.  Society demands celebrity.  Setting fire to a building gives you a lot of that around the world and throughout the local postcodes.

Maybe the young just want the quickest access to the sublime – rather than pondering the socio-political aspects of life.

Their parents have given up to live a life of watching Jeremy Kyle chastise people who ‘surely can’t be that stupid.’ Or watch couples compete on Bargain Hunt for the highest bid under £100 on someone’s life relics.

Even the middle-classes who scrupulously followed the rules –trained themselves to compartmentalise their 9-5,  from brief, but timeless  presents (a look, a smile,  a hug)  for future memories and justifications of all their sacrifices.   Even these devoted to a bigger picture who put their children through approved Uni, and put up with the corporate mundane, or company politics; for the sake of a promised distant company pension  that would pay for a coffee by the pool, are struck by a bolt of thunderous realisation.

Their compliance was after all ultimately rewarded with little more than a pile in the attic of generations of ‘must have’ brands that  sit under tatty blankets in boxes next to old school and Uni text books. Each tome delivering best practice procedures for an honourable career diligently manicured  over the decades – to be cited as a prize-winning demonstrattion of getting it right.

Perhaps for the rioters it’s all about the thrill of their moment – because they are constantly reminded that too many moments  are so empty.

Respect has to be won through risk and scars.

In the heat of the moment, they  are not just oblivious to the consequences of their actions – but numb.

As are the people in Pinner and Moor Park swotting  at the news on their iPads, Outlooking  their smirks  and wincing over a Nespresso at the vulgarity of the uneducated rioters who chose to steal consumer goods like sneakers rather than loot bookstores selling Michael McIntyre’s ‘Life and Laughing.”

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Throughout the decades, advertisers have used metaphors and symbols to personify concepts, labelled as ‘bad’ or even ‘evil’ – that can  be conquered by the consumer armed with ‘brand-x’. (Perhaps a washing powder, or breakfast cerial … software and so on).

When the advertising agency gets the opportunity to actually have a real evil charachter to help them push their message of good vs. bad, it offers dual -edged benefits.

Firstly it get’s PR attention – simply by being controversial. This is especially true for viral campaigns.

Secondly lampooning the charachter gives the consumer a sense of their moral social strengths.

Here are some genune examples of how Bin Laden was featued in advertising during his ten year reign of sitting on a crate in a corner of a shabby room – unoticed by the Pakistani secret intelligence headed up by Mr Magoo. (scroll to bottom).

One born every minute?

Let's all get along

Waste not - want no

Capture the memories

Head hunting - at the sharp end

Postmen always need to be wary of dangerous pets

It takes an Indian owned brand to conquer the Pakistan terrain

So cool he can't be detected

Samsung mobile phones - fill your head with love and peac

Jonathan Gabay

www.jonathangabay.com

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Jonathan talks to the BBC about the Olympic rings launched in London.

He discusses  what should be done to capture the brand spirit of the games for ordinary Londoners and how to turn the UK into a world hub for sports excellence.

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I have reached that age when it’s really difficult to sleep through the entire night in just one drop of the eyelids.

When I was a fit and slender boy  – long, long ago – I lived with my family in a bungalow.  At night from my room I could always hear the sounds of the TV in the lounge, or my brother and sister bickering over teenage anxieties.

The voices of the night carried me to ‘Planet Sleep’ where each continent had strange and wonderful people, and lands that were painted and speckled with bumpy roads of worries, warm seas of hope, mountains of struggles or valleys of possibilities.

Whatever concerned the people of ‘Planet Sleep’, eventually every one smiled the same smiles – which bizarrely looked a lot like mine.

The problem was that every night, I failed to notice them.   (After all, I was too busy with other things like getting over bumpy roads, skinny-dipping in the sea and scaling new heights).

Nowadays, most nights I lay on my pillow facing the yellow glow of my DAB radio displaying the station name of either LBC 97.3, Radio Four or Radio Five Live.

If it is LBC, as the night gets increasingly tangled within its own bed sheets, phone-in callers become increasingly wrought and lonely.

Come daybreak, the Eleanor Rigbys give way to Angry Normans who complain about everything from increased taxes to incoming immigrants, outrageous politicians, on-going crime waves and ultimate deflated ambitions.

The diet of misery is relentless. The wireless wails are only occasionally punctuated by radio phone-in hosts announcing what a wonderful, caring community of souls London is.  The hosts remind me of how nurses in a hospital ward deliver a cheery smile to patients wrought with diarrhea and drugs,who would give up everything he or she ever owned for just five minutes of normality.

With such an endless drip-feed of audible misery, it came as little surprise to me to learn that a recent Ipsos Mori survey of 24 countries pointed to the British being among the most pessimistic  in the world.

Watching the figures that point to a radical diet

Only 17 per cent expect their financial position to improve in the next six months – half the number in Australia (35 per cent) and the United States (34 per cent) and behind Germany (29 per cent).

Britons share little of the optimism of citizens from fast rising economies like Brazil (91 per cent), India (69 per cent) and China (51 per cent).

The only countries with gloomier attitudes were Belgium (16 per cent), Italy (13 per cent), Japan (11 per cent) and France (8 per cent).

So what’s bugging the Brits?

Seventy three per cent of Britons feel less secure in their jobs than six months ago.

Only 27 per cent expect job security to improve. (17th out of 24 in the international table).

I dare to console myself that given the evidence of shoppers during the endless bank holiday that was Christmas and New Year, people are at least confident to buy.

Not quite.  Rather than buy with self-assurance seventy-five per cent said they felt less comfortable when making a major purchase than six months ago.

Around 45 per cent defined their finances as weak, with only 26 per cent believing it to be strong.

From April the UK government gashes £81 billion from public spending – marking the start of the final years of employment for some 300,000 public sector jobs – due to be all but lost by 2015.

Reportedly many economists believe the VAT increase to 20 per cent will spur the Bank of England to instigate a faster set of increases in official interest rates.  Worse still, it is widely expected that various tax rises will in turn prompt brand names to quietly increase prices, simply to cover running costs.

… And it still gets worse.  Through a report commissioned by the development charity, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates that the number of people living in absolute poverty in the UK will rise by 900,000 by 2010.

Recalling the mad rush to the shops during Christmas and the New Year, it was as if a community-wide sense of expectation of doom and even more gloom around the corner compelled the throng to buy-buy-buy because tomorrow we all die-die-die.

More than two to one (70 to 30 per cent) Brits fear the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Asked what issues worried them most, 45 per cent said unemployment and jobs, 40 per cent said immigration and 30 per cent said crime and violence.

Immigration was named as a cause for concern by more Britons than the citizens of any other country, with only Australia (33 per cent) coming close, and more than double the level of concern in Germany (19 per cent) and France (11 per cent).

Yet, in a quirky British way, few Brits – apart from those able to conceal their identities on the radio – openly discuss their anxieties publicly.

To stem the fermenting crisis, the social Stasi, who in  hope for any kind of social control, appeases as many people as they can; checking words said in public for correctness and appropriateness.

The result is that everyone is forced to be like everyone else and so live a soup of blandness and fear of ‘rocking the boat’ – and thereby losing any chance for prosperity.

When left unchecked, that neurosis can give rise to fundamentalism promising to offer redemption to disenfranchised groups at every part of the social scale.

Where nationality or even religion can’t provide identity – entrepreneurs can and do – through branded products and services – all assuring salvation and escape.

If you’re happy and you know it and you really want to show it – complete a form

The bells of hell go ting-a-ling for you but not for me

Messrs. Cameron and Clegg seek to understand the depths of depression unexpressed by brand-UK.

From April 2011, the Office for National Statistics will ask citizens to rate their well being, with the first official happiness index due in 2012.

The Prime Minister quoted US senator Robert Kennedy, who said GDP measured everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”

However, responding to this, the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan warned that surveys trying to measure happiness could make us selfish, introspective and dissatisfied.

He said that UK government plans to monitor mood would “encourage people to dwell on their own needs” rather than others.

America has a General Social Survey.  There is also a Euro-barometer.  Such surveys ask people to assess their lives as well as how they feel at any particular time.

Putting all this data together points to some interesting finds.  Take for example the NBER Working Paper: Subjective Well Being Income, Economic Development and Growth. It suggests that richer countries are generally happier.  However, Asians are less happy than you would expect from their income levels.

This despite the roaring ‘Peking Pound’ that accounted for almost a third of post-Christmas purchases of high end brands such as Burberry, Mulberry, Louis Vuitton and Gucci.

For example, Hong Kong and Denmark enjoys similar income per person, yet Hong Kong’s average life satisfaction is 5.5. on a 10-point scale.  Denmark is 9.

Latin Americans are ebullient, whilst the ex- Soviet Union could do with a stiff vodka, with just over 6 on the scale.

Then there’s Bulgaria, which – according to reports on Sky TV allegedly has gangs netting over 200 million pounds of income per year by coming over to London to pickpocket locals.

Bulgarians relative to their income per person, turns out to be the bluest place in the world.

All is not totally lost however.

By lucky coincidence the Royal Family  announced that April 2011 will see the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

This will apparently give everyone just the ‘feel good’  tonic they need, including a day off from work.  (Something the hundreds and thousands who expect to take extended garden-leave, will relish as they care for their specially cultivated Royal Wedding Celebration roses).

We're all in this together

Up, down and up again

The most fascinating finding is called ‘The U-bend on Well Being.’  The Economist magazine recently devoted its main cover story to it.

Contrary to popular belief, the happiest days of our lives are not necessarily those of our youth.  Nor the most cantankerous once we hit the crinklies of old age.

During late teens we reach quite a high (about 6.8 on a USA ‘well-being index).

Young adulthood is when hope is supposed to be future perfect.  We can’t wait for things to start happening.  Such yearning for immediate gratification spurs an entire culture of goods and services designed to squeeze time into little boxes of easily attainable satisfaction.

The far-reaching effects of such time crushes are profound:

• Why travel to meet people in a dingy disco when you could summon ‘time crushers’ like internet dating sites to sort out the wheat from the chavs into neat little video messages and personal statements?
• Why wait to accumulate knowledge when the all-knowing Google can deliver at a click?
• Why have conversations across a table when you can have an internal dialogue between your id, super-ego and ego via the web?

Whatever image of perfection we are searching for – modern brands and policies promise to deliver.  The more you invest into a branded (political or commercial) ideal and regularly update it – the closer you’ll get to your end-quest.

The ‘The U-bend on Well Being’ bottoms out at 6.3 (around the age of 46- 50).  Thereafter it slowly creeps up again. Reaching 7.0 in the late seventies and early eighties.

By that point, to identify ourselves or prove to others that we belong, we no longer feel compelled to buy more and more stuff.

The older we get, the more past hopes are traded for present happiness  – whilst we can still get it.

Rather than worry if people will love them when they are sixty-four, the older generation doesn’t necessarily crave for an iPod or games console in same the way more uncertain youth do to show inclusiveness.

Self-perceptions no longer need to be maintained solely by constantly upgrading technology, working out at the gym, wearing your heart on your latest Nike trainers or enduring others to network onto the next square of the game of life.

They don’t even blink when people don’t particularly like them –aged 64 or even 74.  They are as chilled and fly as a G6.  (Even if they confuse the aircraft model with the bus route number to the local post office).

Eventually we all become the brand smile of confidence and assurance that we always knew was hidden somewhere within us.

Last night I flicked on LBC. The conversation was about losing weight after the excesses of the Christmas and New Year season.

The interviewer asked a fitness expert about the holy grail of gaining a ‘six- pack’.  Could the ordinary person in the street really ever hope to get a ‘six-pack’ stomach?

The expert replied, “Every person on the planet already has a six-pack.  It’s just gets covered by the excesses of modern living – junk food, fast living …  Remove the fat.”

So we are all equal after all.

With a smile, I closed my 48-year old eyelids and rolled onto my suddenly rather comforting overweight middle-age spread.

Jonathan Gabay

www.jonathangabay.com

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