Mazes, retail crack and the cardrat adventure

Brothel doorway on Berwick Street
Originally uploaded by The Salaryman.

IKEA is a remarkable invention and the evolution of its advertising is an interesting, perhaps cautionary tale. A few years back there was this stuff produced by cultish Chiat/Day survivors or something involving motifs like Swedish gangsters admiring towels and a mysterious tattooed man who did things like lock staff away if they did not understand brand concepts properly. Amusing, well shot etc and made me less ashamed of going there despite the fact that it was more stressful than being forced to staple rabid rats to bits of card at gunpoint. Then the Nordic jokers rejected style in favour of day-glo inclusivity with a campaign based on a palette consisting of skittles and happy meal packaging, complete with non-threatening, non-aspirational gimps filling their living spaces and identities with generic plastic and particleboard tat. As the place is so far beyond needing conventional forms of Marcomms all that is about now are some feeble tube cards saying that if you pay less for your kitchen you can somehow work less. Never mind that most of us electric slaves are on some form of feeble salary and whether a kitchen costs a bit more is a question of marginal madness on the consumer debt front for all but the lucky. The difference between posting onesself a nail bomb filled with battery acid and one adding a few old pushpins and a desiccated mouse to the mix.

Not much can be said about pikea that has not been said elsewhere. I have noticed that I have not a single friend who has not said that a visit there is a last ditch, very stressful experience resulting in expenditure over £100 regardless of what they intended to purchase. The maze is well designed with cul de sacs maximising the chance for impulse purchases of redundant oven gloves and PRC frying pans en route to escape. The standard of design oscillates between passable faux modernism, post modern migraine and plain suburban beige ugh but appears to be going through one of its better phases, at least in the case of TV stands. I am dissenter who is helpless to resist, slumping around the place stewing in guilt for not finding a better way. Except when the proper shops have a seconds sale.