WE FADE TO GREY [472]

“Operation No Grey” was a campaign launched in June 2023 by the car manufacturer Fiat, with the advertising agency Leo Burnett Italy, announcing they will no longer sell cars painted grey. This was symbolised by dipping their latest car, the Fiat 600e, into a vat of orange paint. Their press release said, “The decision was made to enhance the importance of colours in life, embodying the Italian way of living and reaffirming the Brand’s New Dolce Vita value.” This was followed in February 2024 by a full La Dolce Vita guide, provided to help Fiat’s British customers lead a more relaxed and Italian lifestyle.

This gimmick, posture and provocation was most likely fuelled by car sales data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders confirming that grey has been the most popular car colour sold in the UK since 2018, counting for 26.8% of all new cars sold in 2023. With second choice black taking 20.2%, and third choice white at 16.5%, blue is the first non-monochrome choice with 15.1%. The overwhelming popularity of grey and monochrome colours was found among both personal fleet buyers in all parts of the UK, perhaps the result of wanting to protect the resale value of the car.

Fiat’s decision also attempts to highlight themselves above other car brands. Despite being a significant part of the gargantuan conglomerate Stellantis, they are still one brand among many: Fiat’s car range is comprised of small cars like the 500, 600 and Panda, with the Ford Focus-sized Tipo no longer sold in the UK. Despite compete with similarly-sized cars from Renault, Volkswagen, Seat and Skoda, they also vie with other Stellantis brands like Vauxhall, Opel, Peugeot and Citroën, the latter having its own extensive history of small cars. Want a bigger Fiat? Stellantis will sell you an Alfa Romeo instead or, better still, a Maserati.

Checking Fiat’s website in other countries confirm they do not sell grey cars elsewhere either, although they don’t need to sell La Dolce Vita to the Italians. However, what I have noticed is they have restricted the choice of available colours in another way: the price. The new 600 is available in red, but if you want any other colour, including Sunset Orange, it will cost you £650. Likewise, the electric 500e (Ice White), the original 500 hybrid (Sicilian Orange) and the Panda (Gelato White) are essentially sold in only one colour, unless you pay extra – the upcoming Grande Panda has no information available on which colour, or colours, you can get for free.

Increased choice is available, but not necessarily demanded, so therefore, if you want La Dolce Vita, you will have to pay for it. Even with a base Fiat 500 coming in at just under £17,000, an extra £650 is a significant cost to add for something that, while making your car easier to find, won’t change how it drives.

LIKE SUGAR AND SPICE [471]

“Coca-Cola Spiced” was a variant of the ubiquitous soft drink sold by The Coca-Cola Company in North America from February to September 2024. Originally introduced as the first permanent addition to the range since Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla in 2020, it was withdrawn after only seven months due to undisclosed reasons, while Cherry Vanilla and “Diet Coke with Splenda”, sweetened with sucralose and aspartame, were withdrawn as well.

I came across an imported can of the with-sugar version Coca-Cola Spiced – a “Zero Sugar” version was also sold - a few months into its now-limited run. I had not heard any description or review of the drink, only that there was a Coke labelled as “Spiced”.

Drinking the can left me underwhelmed – “Spiced” essentially meant “with raspberry”, in the same way that the longstanding cherry variant of Coke is “spiced” with cherry flavour.

“Spice” is a word used in different ways, and what I expected upon seeing that word on a can of Coke was expecting the taste to be “hotter”, or more piquant, which I don’t equate with raspberry flavouring. I think it was a mistake not to identify the use of raspberry in the name of the drink, the only major clue being a slight tinge of pink in the red colour of the can, and in using a word as potent as “spiced” only in relation to raspberry.

Coca-Cola has, since 2022, been leaning into another definition of “spice” with its “Creations” line of special edition drinks – making its drinks more interesting or, more specifically in this case, giving them more attention. I liked the strawberry and watermelon-flavoured version of Coke produced with, and named after, the American music producer and DJ Marshmello – ironically, the following “Dreamworld” flavour tasted more like marshmallow. A later “creation” imagined the year 3000 through a caramel and popcorn taste, and the current Oreo cookie flavour feels less a “creation” than a simple mash-up, one reminding me more of chocolate Angel Delight than Oreo.

My takeaway from this situation is that Coca-Cola “Original Taste”, and the brand in general, is so ubiquitous it has become part of the background, but the current solution is in adding to the formula in various ways to make people continue to try the drink, when advertising the existing drinks to remind people about them, or implement a loyalty scheme, have already been tried.

As Coca-Cola Spiced was introduced in North America, the UK received their own flavour that, while sounding more boring, remains on sale: Lemon.

YOU SAW THE WHOLE OF THE MOON [470]

[Update: A big thank you to the digital artist Dave Jeffery [https://www.kecskebak.hu/], whose work in creating and recreating channel idents has been used on screen by the BBC and Big Centre TV, for contacting me via Mastodon to confirm that Meridian’s logo was designed by Ian Carley, the company’s head of design. The original article is below.]

The half-sun, half-moon face used as a logo by Meridian Broadcasting has remained lodged in my mind long after it disappeared from TV screens, but I have never considered why it was used to represent independent television in the south and south-east of England – my hunch is that it doesn’t matter at all.

Back when ITV was the name of a network of regional TV channels, mostly named for the area on which they were broadcast – Thames, Tyne Tees, Anglia, Scottish, London Weekend Television and so on – Meridian replaced TVS (Television South), providing programmes in its area of the UK from 1993. It is still broadcasting, but in the procession of takeovers and mergers of ITV companies that began when Meridian bought Anglia in 1994, Meridian’s distinctive logo and name were usurped by a national “ITV” identity from 2002, the name living on as “ITV News Meridian”, the name of their regional bulletins.

This does not explain the choosing of its symbol, from a designer whose name I could not find, here picked out in high-contrast red, yellow and purple, initially in idents on a halved yellow and blue background. The sun-moon face is centuries old, borne of opposing forces, of duality, and of accepting this as a nature of being, from good and bad, to life and death, and femininity and masculinity. It was seen as decoration on old naval navigational tools, like compasses and sextants, fitting in with the brief of serving an area of the UK steeped in maritime and naval tradition like Portsmouth, Southampton, Cowes and Chatham, but means precisely nothing if you are also broadcasting inland to the likes of Salisbury, Reading and Oxford.

The name “Meridian” is more confusing than expected: it comes from the Latin “meridionalis”, meaning “of the south”, but it makes me think of London, and the Greenwich Meridian - this use came from the Latin “meridies”, for “midday”. When the consortium that owned Meridian bid, in 1991, to represent the ITV network in the south and south-east of England, they also bid for the London area, most likely using the same name and logo. Perhaps the intention was, just “Granada” came to symbolise Manchester and the north-west of England as much as that region of Spain, Meridian will do the same for the south, once it appears often enough. This expectation did not happen so much for Carlton, like Granada a pre-existing company with a pre-existing name, which eventually won the London licence.

The website TVArk has a quote from a J Dallas, creative director at Meridian, talking in 1999 about the replacement of their original bombastic and orchestral idents with something a lot calmer and more purple: “The idea was they thought the Company had become established and the computer graphics for the original ident looked old fashioned. The problem with the logo is it looks stuck on to something whatever you do with it.” Meanwhile, the wonderful book “Branding for Television With Knobs On” by Martin Lambie-Nairn, designer of the Channel 4 logo, noted that Meridian executives took offense at being told their production and marketing wasn’t connected by a unifying strategy and brief, its “marketing tree” being disparate twigs growing from the ground, unable to take advantage of the fact the TV channel itself, branding and all, is as much a product as the programmes by themselves.

The Meridian logo appeared everywhere: before every programme, at the end of programmes made or commissioned by them, in flashes before each advertisement break began, and in a bizarre tie-in with Southern Ford Dealers, where you could buy the Ford Fiesta Meridian special edition car – I really saw a TV broadcaster’s logo plastered on cars that private citizens chose to buy with their own money.

Meridian’s legacy was in children’s programmes like “Wizadora”, “ZZZap!” and “It’s a Mystery”, alongside dramas “The Ruth Rendell Mysteries” and “Hornblower”, and the documentary series “Monkey Business”. However, its logo was used so prominently between 1993 and 2002 that its legacy is what remains for me - it is visually striking, but it only represents itself, not what Meridian was, or continues to be.

BOYS ALWAYS WORK IT OUT [469]

“Oblique Strategies” is a set of cards, introduced in 1975 by artists Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, designed to promote lateral thinking when breaking creative blocks. I knew about them from Eno’s collaboration with David Bowie, sparking and informing decisions made on Bowie’s albums “Heroes” (1977) and “Lodger” (1979).

My sister Layla Spence, writer and artist of the online comic “Ill Fame”, owns a pack of these cards, saying she has used them when a second opinion might be needed, and thought I could use them in my writing. 

You don’t reach the four hundred and sixty-ninth article in a series without having deployed some lateral thinking along the way, but I didn’t know if I should use the cards to spur an idea, or to apply them to something I had already prepared. Upon cutting the cards, the first one read “What wouldn’t you do?”, so my answer was to be led by the cards this time around, forcing me to be creative about my creativity.

“What mistakes did you make last time?” I think my last article about Toys “R” Us opening concessions in branches of WHSmith was a little overblown. Visiting a local branch that stated it was “now open” amounted to a further statue of Geoffrey the Giraffe, and shelves of toys to one side. No space for traditional WHSmith product lines stationery was really lost – if anything, it looked tidier than usual. I always visit that branch when I am in town, and I was facing the prospect of losing some of the reason I go there – as it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

“Do nothing for as long as possible.” Your baseline may vary - living authentically as yourself is politically charged in the sight of the wrong people. Meanwhile, I don’t write to intervene - I don’t need the hassle. I observe, I write, I continue looking. “Nothing” is subjective.

“Abandon normal instruments.” I will switch to making videos someday.

“Who should be doing this job? How would they do it?” There is no vacancy here, but if you can honour your obligation to explore your intrigue every week, while trying to articulate that in an approachable way while never having a set formula for how that will be done each time, then you may be in with a chance... to do it for yourself on your own site.

“Trust in the you of now.” Don’t give yourself enough time to decipher or question your methods. Ritual leads the way. Deadline is style. You are in there somewhere.

“Don’t break the silence.” I drew this card just after watching a YouTube video about a Nintendo GameBoy clone that I want to buy, which I watched to give myself a rest for a moment – I am purposefully thinking of buying myself a worthwhile distraction that forces concentration. I listen to the music or have a TV on in the background all the time. I only do “silence” when I am asleep, and even then, my TV must remain on as I fall asleep. I can be “still”, but not “silent”.

“Do we need holes?” What did you have in mind?

“Abandon normal instruments.” I just drew the card that inspired David Bowie’s song “Boys Keep Swinging”. The plan was already to emulate a garage band by having Bowie’s band playing each other’s instruments – the simple drums are by guitarist Carlos Alomar – and the card seems to imply they were on the right track. Also, “abandon normal instruments” for a song about gender identity? [Yes, I was thinking so hard I didn’t realise I drew the same card twice.]

“Distorting time.” This may have been my plan all along – whatever that is, I’ll never tell, because I don’t actually know.