There is a lovely speech that Chief Seattle of the Squamish tribe is supposed to have delivered at a meeting to discuss the sale of native land to white settlers (the actual text of the speech and even the event itself are the subject of considerable dispute among historians, but I like the sentiment anyway). It begins:

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?”

Saffron has been appointed the branding agency for London. Which is a crying shame for London and yet another abuse and distortion of the hitherto useful commercial concept of branding. Here at Grumpy Manor, the idea of branding London is indeed strange to us.

You can’t brand the ocean, you can’t brand nature, you can’t brand Caravaggio, or Mozart, or Shakespeare. You can’t brand the atom bomb. Or Einstein. Or Plato. Or John Lennon or Charles Dickens. Or Germany or Paraguay or the Matterhorn. And those God brand wars have been an unmitigated fucking disaster.

Branding is about imbuing trivial, generally inanimate things with emotional attributes (and yes, in the scheme of things the sacred iPad and BMWs are trivial things) and convincing people to pay more for them than the cost of their manufacture and sales. It’s brilliant; it keeps the economy ticking over and the money going round.

Why didn’t someone challenge brand-mad Boris and say something to the effect of, “Look you shambolic Etonian git masquerading as a charming buffoon (that might actually be a tautology), what do you really want to accomplish? Jack up visits to art galleries? Get businesses to fill up your office towers? Hype the Olympics? Sell more tickets to the opera? Fill the Ripper tour buses? Convince Americans to stay in overpriced hotels and shell out for the pricey seats at the football? Twickenham? Wimbledon? Fill the pubs and restaurants?”

Branding is not a synonym for marketing. Any and all of those things might be accomplished with creative marketing and communications programmes. But you can’t brand London because no one has the capacity to imagine all the things London is or can be. Branding is about reducing something, simplifying it. Which is an extraordinarily dumb idea for London. The story of London is millennia in the telling. I’m pretty sure there isn’t an evolving trans-media brand narrative that will come close to capturing it.

This is from the Saffron’s website:

This is a call for authenticity. For keeping it real. We come across too many new brands that don’t feel right for a company we know well. This is because these brands are not authentic.

I suspect yet another “non-authentic brand” “that doesn’t feel right” is about to be foisted on a brand weary world.