World Heritage? No let’s go shopping

on Jun 14 in Advertising, Bristol, Culture, Random tagged by Peter Blackman

You will be reassured to know that as I type these words I am wearing trousers. Socks, shoes, a t-shirt and underpants too. I am fully clothed. In clothes that I have, in the main, purchased myself. I tell you this so that I might set out my credentials as a modern shopper. I go shopping. With the right companions, locations and circumstances, it can be a pleasurable experience. I find the traditional male knee jerk reaction to shopping tiresome and more often than not, a lie. It’s also hard to try on casual slacks, let alone skinny jeans when your knees jerk uncontrollably at the mention of consumerism.

So I am not surprised or outraged that shopping centres, factory outlets, retail parks and whoever else from across the whole of the South West and Wales are at present seeking to entice me to enjoy their own particular retail experience. Posters and bus advertising tells me that ‘fashion has a new capital’. Which is Cardiff. Having been out in Cardiff recently, I do not believe this claim, but the pictures look nice. The Mall on the outskirts of Bristol promises me that ’shopping is a joy’. I’ve been to this Mall many times -  the last being a visit to buy my daughters sensibly priced sun hats and other various essentials for the summer. It is clean. It is brightly lit. But the only part of the experience that is joyful and triumphant is the drive away, mission accomplished, without recourse to family counselling.

However there is one particular advertising campaign exhorting me to shop and spend that does surprise and outrage me. It’s this one -  and it’s not for a particular shop or retail centre. It’s for a city - the city of Bath. Which according to the copy is ‘A golden city paved with shops’

Am I outraged because the Dick Whittington imagery and headline has no relation to Bath -  being a legend based firmly in London?

No. It’s because this comes from Visitbath.co.uk who describe their city as being “nourished by natural hot springs, Bath offers a unique experience with stunning architecture, great shopping and iconic attractions.” There is it again - shopping. Sorry I’ve got to break off for a second to utter a primal scream across the office. There. Better now. Let’s take this slowly. Bath does indeed have stunning architecture. Likewise iconic attractions. I’m with visitbath so far. But what’s more it is a WORLD HERITAGE SITE. Let’s now look at the criteria a site has to fulfill to ascend to Unesco World Heritage Site status:

Selection criteria:

1. to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius;
2. to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;
3. to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared;
4. to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history;

Remember that these are just the first four -  and Bath fulfills them all. Is it not extraordinary therefore, that this unique, amazing city is being sold to visitors not on anything which has helped it achieve this exalted global status, but rather on the fact that it has shops. Why? When EVERYWHERE has shops. Lots of them. I know -  they’re all bombarding me with their advertising messages all day and everyday. When I go to places there are shops. Moreoften than not, branches of the same shops that I have left back in my home town.

Bath has something different. Genuinely, uniquely different. So in my view this campaign is a sorry failure of imagination and belief. It’s a client and an agency agreeing ‘yes we do have something unique, but we don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just do what everyone else is doing. People like shopping. Let’s talk about shopping’

It’s a massive marketing #fail in my opinion.