Making brands more distinctive

It’s been a really odd and slightly schizophrenic year for Brits.

A great Jubilee celebration and Olympic games all reaffirming the good things about tradition and “our way” of doing things – inventive, creative yet respectful of the past and supportive of institutions .

Yet in the same year we have revelations that Kenyans were tortured by our mythical “do good” empire, our “great” banking system again being caught as utterly corrupt over Libor and now the police again being exposed as protecting nothing apart from their own backsides in their handling of the Hillsborough disaster.

I remember Hillsborough well as I was working my Saturday job in a local takeaway when the disaster unfolded on the radio. I was trying to get hold of my brother, a football fan, as I didn’t know whether he’d gone to the match (not that he would have, but as a non-footie fan I didn’t know). In the days before mass ownership of mobile phones it was quite tense trying to get in-touch.

An utterly minor footnote to a very sad example of the British disease of unquestioning belief in those in power and with status.