From Edgware Road to Brixton on 7/7

This piece was first presented as an academic paper at the

9th EASA Biennial Conference: Bristol, UK. September 18th – 21st, 2006.

Introduction.

This paper focuses on observations that I made on July 7th 2005, or what is now known as 7/7. It will provide my ‘on the spot’ ethnographic account of my experience of being in a hotel in the Edgware Road on July 7th 2005 and how a sense of belonging grew out of being in a place which had been bombed. It also explores the role of organisational policy in relation to the concept of belonging.

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Foucault’s notion of morality as a marker to what is sane and acceptable behaviour helps to deconstruct some of the observations and interactions I had on July the 7th 2005. He argues that in the mid 18th Century madness was segregated based on moral and religious discourse. Religion became the core of reason, by being the ‘concrete form’ of what was not mad. The mad person was controlled by being placed in a ‘moral element’ where they “must feel morally responsible for everything within him that may disturb morality and society and must hold no one but himself responsible for the punishment he receives” (1989: 234). For Foucault, the need to control madness was more important than curing it.

I want to illustrate, through an ethnographic account, that using the concept of madness symbolically helps us understand coping mechanisms that were present in Central London on July 7th  2005. Simply put, interpretations of everyday normality switched to become interpretations of ‘madness’ that were deemed immoral.

 

Observation 1 – Bombing and belonging

On the 7th of July 2005 I was attending a Department of Health launch of a report called ‘Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health Services’ which was being held at the Edgware Rd Hilton Hotel. I was looking forward to it because the debates around why there are such high rates of Black mental health service users has been going on for almost fifty years.

I caught a tube from Brixton in the morning and changed at Victoria station to catch another tube on the District and Circle Line to Edgware Road. This train seemed to take a long time because it stopped in-between stations and then waited for prolonged periods at each platform. However, I was engrossed in an article in the free newspaper about London’s success in winning the Olympics the previous day. The driver of the tube attempted to calm passengers’ frustration with the journey going nowhere very slowly. He apologised a number of times in a sprightly tone, which was received by those in the carriage, including me, with tuts, moans and the odd “for fuck’s sake”.  Soon the driver’s apologies turned to providing us with the explanation that there had been a ‘power surge’ on the underground somewhere in East London. The tuts and moans of frustration halted to be replaced temporarily by looks of confusion on passengers’ faces that seemed to convey the question: “Uhhh, what’s a power surge”? However, we all quickly accepted that power surges were a possibility and a totally rational explanation to why the journey was taking so long. This meant that we could quickly return to our tuts, moans and abuse of London Underground.

At Paddington tube station, which is one stop away from Edgware Road, the train sat at the platform for a few minutes. The driver, in a less sprightly tone, suggested that we all got off the train and continued our journeys on foot. Of course, this was met with further abuse, but the fact was that ‘we’, the passengers, had been defeated by the unpredictable power surge. I got to the entrance of Paddington tube station and asked a London Underground assistant for directions to the Edgware Road Hilton. He gave me some simple directions and told me the walk would only take 3-4 minutes. As I started my walk, I noticed that there was a mass of police cars and vans driving, with sirens on, in the same direction as I was walking. From a distance I could see that at the entrance of Edgware Road tube station police were cordoning off the area in a rather hurried way. My immediate thoughts were: “Jesus, what a power surge”. Although I was no nearer actually understanding what one was.

The Hilton was opposite the Edgware Road Station and when I arrived at the hall where the launch of the report was being held, delegates were already discussing the power surge. I registered and got my nametag. Then, I quickly focused on the coffee and mountain of mini pastries. I was told the power surge had delayed the start of the conference, but after 30 minutes I realised that the table, with roughly 300 nametags on it, was still pretty full and the mini pastries were still in abundance, regardless of my attempts to consume them. It was at this stage that the word ‘terrorism’ was first used as a possible reason behind the upheaval. The NHS managers I was chatting to seemed to be divided. Half thought that this was a terrorist act in reaction to the success of the Olympic bid while others were steadfast in the power surge theory. Still, the nametags were showing no signs of being collected.

The launch got under way an hour or so later than planned and lasted only until the first coffee break when it was confirmed that ‘bombs’, and not a power surge, were the cause of the upheaval. Furthermore, we were told that we had to remain in the hall because the reception area of the hotel was being used as an accident and emergency station. We were also told that two telephones had been set up so we could ring family and friends to tell them that we were ok and that lunch would be brought to the hall earlier than advertised.

The mood changed quickly from delegates discussing possible theories behind the bombings to that of a forum of global communication. People started to receive calls on mobile phones from friends and family from around the World. I personally received a couple of calls from my uncle and cousins in Botswana describing the images they were watching live on TV of the hotel we were in. Yet we were in an information vacuum and reliant on outside global contact through mobile phones. It began to feel exciting because we were on the front-line. Those who were ringing us were also telling their friends that they knew friends in the hotel: I had become news!

A few hours later we were allowed to leave and a group of about ten delegates, including myself, decided to walk from Edgware Road to South London, over Vauxhall Bridge and then on to Brixton. This walk would take roughly three hours.

It was on this walk that I realised that everyday behaviour had ceased and that any sign of normality was perceived as an act of madness and betrayal. Let me develop this by describing the walk. Firstly, the bombs had meant that transport had come to a standstill. This forced people to break out of their everyday routines and gather as one large swarm of bodies walking home. It resembled a large and endless stream of people going to a football stadium to watch a game.  As at a football match, there was also a sense of tribalism where, without clear orders or leadership, we fitted into similar physical and emotional rhythms. This feeling was also manifested by ‘us’ all being affected by the bombs and therefore, by the ‘war on terror’. The fact that we were walking as a direct consequence of the bombings was enough to create a sense of belonging, in other words, the bombing allowed us to belong.

Our immediate enemies were not the bombers but those individuals who were carrying out normal activities. At a French restaurant two businessmen were eating al fresco with a bottle of white wine. We watched from across the road and made some joking comment about the need for a drink. Then, a woman approached the two men and hurled abuse at them for being insensitive. They were not part of the tribe and instead had become a form of pollution to the perceived purity of the moment. Normality had become an act of madness and irrationality that was effectively non-conformity.

The walk took us into Hyde Park; there we were met with another act of normality. A jogger was exercising in the park. He had on running shorts and a vest, headband and earphones. One person in my group commented; “What a fucking nutter”. All of a sudden, keeping fit was seen as an act of madness. In a similar way to the two businessmen eating al fresco, the jogger was seen as having broken away from the moral order of the mass. Normality was now insensitive.

The short description illustrates how discourses of morality are quickly formed so to create a common connectedness and sense of belonging on a very rudimentary level. Continuing to engage in everyday practice threatens this conformity so much that it is quickly and largely unconsciously deemed as an act of madness.

 

 

Belonging as an organisation

I have focused on how individuals responded to the bombings. However, as the months went by I noticed that this sense of belonging was also present on an organisational level.

The NHS event rescheduled the launch of the report on mental health and race five months from the 7th of July 2005, at the same hotel and on the 7th day of the month. The conference was now called One London One World – BME (Black and Minority Ethnic Groups) Conference. The conference organisers explained to delegates that there was a special quiet room that was next to the conference hall if anyone felt that the conference stirred emotions in them relating to July the 7th. Some delegates began to laugh when they heard this, while others shook their heads and had the same puzzled look on their faces as I did, a few months earlier, when I was on the tube trying to work out what a power surge actually was.

The change of the name of the conference represented a ‘collective London’ and the designated room where delegates could go and reflect could be interpreted as a mechanism to forge an imagined identity where everyone understood the codes of belonging. However, it was now the turn of the organization to be deemed ‘mad’ by those in the conference hall because it was perceived to have misjudged the meaning behind belonging. An article published in The Guardian on July 7th2006 Jonathan Freedland captures the short lived feeling of belonging well by illustrating how the naming the day, 7/7, was a misjudgment in its own right because it falsely tried to mirror itself with 9/11. Where 9/11 allowed for a collective emotion of revenge, 7/7 did little to muster up feelings of being pro-war. Freedland explains that for a few weeks after the bombings in 7/7 there was an increase of 4000 push bike journeys to work. This lasted exactly 2 weeks before people started using the tube and buses again. Belonging was a short-lived experience where, over a few weeks, society demanded that people returned to normality.

However, on an organizational level, the need to remain attached to a sense of belonging was rekindled by the NHS. They published a pamphlet called: Affected by the London Bombings? How to get free NHS help. In the pamphlet it suggests that the “bombings on 7 July 2005 had a profound effect on many people, particularly those living and working in the London area. While some people have now recovered, many people have not yet come forward for help”. It then goes on to explain that: “Many people may suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is a common reaction to a traumatic event such as a terror attack”. Furthermore, it states that “if you or your children are experiencing any of the symptoms above or below, as a result of the London bombings, it may be helpful to seek professional assistance.

  • Sleep problems
  • Fear and anxiety
  • Tearfulness and sadness
  • Helplessness
  • Anger and irritability
  • Guilt
  • Concentration and memory problems
  • Headaches and bodily pain
  • Avoiding things that remind you of the bombings
  • Feeling numb or dreamlike
  • Avoiding talking about the event or needing to talk about it all the time
  • Unpleasant thoughts and images

It finally, tells you how to get advice.

I don’t want to belittle the fact that many people were and are heavily affected by the bombings and might well need help and support. However, what is interesting for this paper is to show how the discourse of madness has moved from being symbolic and based on a pseudo-tribal morality to becoming a policy driven pathology or a biomedical symptom of mental illness. The pamphlet also relies on generating a feeling of moral guidance by using a similar language of engagement as pharmaceutical companies use in their television advertisements on ant

WHY BRANDS NEED TO DO MORE THAN LISTEN

Listening to consumers in order to ‘get closer’ and understand their needs is a common term that I hear within the worlds of branding, marketing and innovation. This sounds proactive, but is in fact passive – a lazy, get-out-of-jail for-free card, that deflects from the real challenge for a brand – how to embed themselves within their consumers’ cultural eco-system.

Listening should naturally play a part, but it is not the be-all and end-all. Rather than simply listening, successful brands are constantly monitoring the cultural pulse of the eco-system to form strong relationships with consumers by understanding their culture.

For some brands, the global landscape of loyal brand followers can mean that embedding a brand within a culture is becoming more complex. An example of this is how brands are represented in news reports when a natural or political disaster occurs. Brands become visual, iconic signifiers of communities around the world that are suffering from death, loss and trauma.

Take, for example, the news reports on the Ebola crisis in West Africa. Such reports often include images of men and young boys coping with loss, illness and isolation while wearing the shirts of English Premier League football teams, such as Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester United. The shirts feature other brands sponsoring each club, such as Puma, Emirates, Samsung, Adidas, Chevrolet and Nike.

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One image from a BBC report in Sierra Leone summed up the difficulty. A dead body is removed from a building in a village, a temporary place for the dead, which in happier times was a tribute to the Arsenal Emirates Stadium in London and the Barclays Premier League. The wall displays the text ‘Welcome to Emirates’, along with three global brand logos, used to create a sense of belonging, of being a legitimate Arsenal community. It is as if the building is officially part of Arsenal FC.

Most English Premier league brands are good at embedding themselves on a local level by supporting communities and charities. In August 2014, two Newcastle United fans tragically died in an air crash en route to see their team play a pre-season friendly in New Zealand. To show respect for their loss, the club and its supporters held a one- minute silence at a home game as a sign of respect. They were not just loyal and committed fans, but members of the Newcastle United family.

As global brands, football clubs can find it challenging to adapt and embrace the fact that many of their global followers see themselves as part of the same family. As the image shows, the dedication to embed the brand values of Arsenal within a community is a physical manifestation of the brand as part of a culture. But this relationship does not flow both ways.

How can brands deal with this new reality? As a starting point, global brands need to acknowledge that the local community and fan base is present on a global level, where the brand is often part of a cultural eco-system. Brands need to reframe thinking about loyalty by creating new technologies of support, new brand narratives and rituals of ‘the local’.

Crucially, brands need to offer the same support, understanding and empathy to global communities as they do to their traditional local communities. This means that brands need to acknowledge their presence within different cultural locations. Listening is not enough to achieve this, we can listen but remain docile. No brand wants to be docile.

 

This blog was first published at The Future Laboratory 

BRAND WITCHCRAFT: How brand partnerships can be toxic

A successful brand becomes part of the consumer’s culture and values, behaviour, attitudes and social identity.

I recently spoke to the CMO of a well known global digital brand who saidinternally we need to put our consumers’ world at the core of what we do”. Rightly, he realised that they could design mobile products and services that complimented the culture of their consumer. Cultural factors are key to determining where a brand sits in their consumers’ cultural ecosystem and how successful they are.

Brands fail drastically if they do not work hard to understand consumer culture: they need to be constantly in the ‘cultural pulse’ of their consumer. But a brand’s identity can be crushed if they partner with brands that have values that are toxic. As a business anthropology, my view is that toxic brands carry a negative spirit that works to devalue their consumers and other brands that it partners with in order to profit.

The UK the payday loan company, Wonga, announced a loss in profit of £37m. They have received little sympathy from the public and press. Years of eye-watering profit margins achieved by paring the promise with easy money with high rates of interest meant that they developed mountains of gold. Wonga became a powerful wealthy bulldozer which, for some brands, has become a financially attractive proposition to form partnerships with.

The most visible brand partnerships that Wonga has formed are with two English professional football (soccer) teams; the English Premier League teamNewcastle United and the ex-Premiership team Blackpool FC (now relegated from the Championship http://www.football-league.co.uk ). Both teams’ ethics were questioned by fans and in the media when their shirt sponsorships were announced. Papiss Cisse, one of Newcastle United star players, threated to cover Wonga’s logo on his playing shirt due to the conflict between his religious beliefs and the values of Wonga. Yet, both clubs have remained firm in order to reap the financial rewards.

 

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However, this season (2014/15) the two clubs are in free fall on the field and in relation to their attachment with their fans. In recent weeks both set of fans have organised numerous protests against their owners and have refused to attend games.

On the face of it, these acts of protest are aimed more at the perceived incompetence of the owners of both clubs than Wonga. However, it is worth not ruling out out the influence that the spirit of Wonga is having at these clubs misfortune. Traditional anthropological writings focused on how misfortune in a society or to an individual could be rationalised by claiming witchcraft was the cause . In other words, the reason this misfortune is happening to me is due to witchcraft. Although this theory has developed and been challenged in modern day anthropology, it still helps us rationalise that the source of these clubs’ misfortune is symbolically aligned with their association with Wonga. Like witchcraft, Wonga has harmed the brand identity of each club. Fan anger is directed at the owners but the owners of each club are themselves under the power of the toxic brand values of Wonga (financial gain over nurturing fan loyalty). The result is that the identity and values of each football club have been polluted.

Wonga will no doubt react to their loss in profit by repositioning its brand to lure new consumers into taking out loans. But, what about Newcastle Utd and Blackpool FC? To the delight of Newcastle Utd fans, their manager left the club and joined Crystal Palace FC, another Premiership club, as their new manager. Crystal Palace FC are now having one of their best seasons in history, while Newcastle United are sliding into the abyss of a relegation battle. The Newcastle fans have turned on their controversial owner, Mike Ashley. Blackpool FC have already been relegated to League 1 with a depleted squad, terrible financial hardship and low fan moral.

Both teams need to find a ritual of purification to bring their brands into their fans’ world and values. This is not easy but the first step is both the most obvious and hardest – New owners that put the fans at the heart of their clubs.