Something for the Weekend is coming up to its 1st birthday and we’ll be introducing a few new things in the hope of keeping it fresh and relevant to you.

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Fat people they’re just great aren’t they? They’re just like the rest of us but um, bigger, much bigger, writes ST’s Olivia Foster. Fat people absolutely fascinate me. I’m almost like a fat addict. I just love watching them. I feel like it’s almost like the modern day version of train spotting, except for they move an awful lot slower due to all the weight holding them back. Plus, as they’re everywhere you don’t have to look like a tosspot sat on a camper stool at a train station to be able to enjoy them. But, this brilliant sport does have its setbacks. Unlike trains, fat people get a little agitated if you stare at them for too long. Taking notes is virtually impossible, I mean, they know you know they know you’re just looking at them because they’re fat, you can’t make it worse by taking down size, shape details and location on your best Moleskin notepad.

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Years ago to settle an argument I was having in the loaded office about Crisps I concluded “Listen there’s no way Kettle Crisps are better than Walkers cheese and onion and to prove it we’ll have a Crisps World Cup.” The resulting 64 bag head to head knock-out tournament was a defining moment for the magazine. It was the first true representation of my belief that trivial things should be treated seriously and vice versa. With Sabotage Times we wanted something similar. So we’ve been creating Pie Chart break downs on the War On terror, Tour De France, World Cup and the mind of Raoul Moat. Sometimes they’re brilliant, other times crass and provocative, other times genuinely interesting. It’s where maths meets the talk of the public house. I call it Boozernomics.

The phrase, “It’s like something from Brass Eye/Day Today/Chris Morris”, has long since passed the 70’s/80’s references to Monty Python as the benchmark for surreal news. Most things that are compared to the grand master of modern news-media manipulation usually fall a bit short. Gazza arriving at the Raoul Moat hunt in Rothbury, however, didn’t. This surpassed Geri Halliwell being a UN anti-landmine campaigner and Beckham Spice being a design consultant for Range Rover. This was Gazza, live on Real radio giving almost clear instructions – albeit, through a fog of lager – on how he had arrived to find and save Raoul Moat or ‘Moaty’ as he claimed to know him. Having listened to the events unfurl live last Friday, Sabotage Times spent Saturday morning transcribing the conversation. The highlight being Gazza’s care package for Moaty. The bizarre thing is there’s a good chance Gazza’s intervention could well have been more productive than what the 250 armed officers and RAF Tornado managed to achieve. It cost £4m to find a bloke and have him kill himself. Gazza would have done it for the price of his taxi from Newcastle and the expenses for the bread, chicken, NUFC jacket, fishing rod, dressing gown and lager which he’d bought along as supplies for the Fugitive.


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The National Magnum Mint Shortage was a bit of a bastard. I’ve spent too much of my adult life as I know it hooked on sex, drink, drugs, carrot salad, football, Scrabble on Facebook and Haribo, and a lot of time and money learning to combat my impulsive need for these things to go and let a fucking ice cream topple life as I know it, but that’s what happens when ice cream companies sneak out a new product and then the supply chain falters. Magnum must be one of the great brand successes of the last two decades. It’s essentially a choc ice on a stick but the quality of the chocolate and the feel of ad campaigns have made eating these things feel like you’re locked in a room at Claridges with Raquel Welch or Robert Pattinson. The Magnum Mint has a hint of ‘Noshtalgia’ about it. Something about the taste takes me back to my formative years as an ice cream and sweets eater when life, non-school time and World Cups seemed much simpler, hotter and more amazing. Having tonsillitis in a heatwave gave me a good excuse to get more Magnum Mints but could I find any in London, East Sussex or Kent? I might as well have been talking Gujarati to the country and seaside ice cream vendors. I tracked down the Walls Press Office and even they’d run out of the fuckers but sent round some other stock instead. Meanwhile, my mate Dead Bloke in Bradford taunted me with revelations on Twitter that an Asda near him were selling packets of six. That customer ‘Need to feed’ feeling is the gold all products long for.

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In amidst the brilliant mash-ups of The Flintstones meets The Sopranos, and Jabba The Hut singing the theme from Minder on Sabotage Times, we occasionally find and recommend work you can simply call true digital art. The Big Bang Big Boom from BluBlu.org is a nine-minute long stop motion film of graffiti depicting evolution as we know it.

According to Antidote, a blog on all things social by Mother Strategist Jon Miller, people often describe charity Amnesty International as a ‘bit of a cult’. In research, they’re described as ‘aloof’, ‘insular’, ‘closed’. You would suspect that Amnesty’s natural response would be to shift perception towards more acceptable modern values ‘transparency and inclusiveness’. But Jon poses the question – could being a ‘bit cult’ be a good thing? Noting that after all the research shows Amnesty is a bit cool too, and in fact it’s an attractive brand.  An article called Why cults seduce suggests there are four key features to consider when it comes to cults. Firstly ‘Boundaries’ – you are either in or out, the bigger the barrier the more passionate the solidarity. Then ‘Initiation’ – you have to earn your right to belong. Next ‘Customs’ – those that bind you to the group.  And finally ‘ideology’ – cults have a strong central ideology that fosters alignment and clarity. The article talks abou what marketing can learn from cults, and gives Apple as an example: the brand invented its own customs, interfaces, rituals and principles, and even has a founder/leader-figure. The early advertising read “Macintosh. A religion, a way of life.” Of course that was ten years ago, and Apple’s dreams have come true: it’s no longer a cult, but a global corporate religion.  Apple took on the Microsoft Empire, just like the cult of Christianity took on the Roman Empire – and became the Catholic Church. Perhaps it’s a good lesson: stay true to your counter-culture values, and become the new mainstream. So what about Amnesty International? The truth is, Amnesty is a bit of a cult. It has a clear ideology: to protect the human, to demand justice. It has a clear approach: ordinary people standing up for human rights. It even has the semi religious iconography. And Amnesty can learn from Apple: the best way of appealing to the mainstream is to stay true to your own story – everything follows from there.

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Fashion branding agency Saturday, who live one floor up from Mother and are part of the Mother family of businesses, have long been our source of what’s hot and what’s not in the world of fashion. But now it seems they can be everyone’s resource as last month they launched their very own fashionista magazine called INDUSTRIE. The Business of Fashion, a site dedicated to, as you’d guess, the business of fashion, reported how there was huge anticipation for the new magazine amongst industry followers, since the magazine’s first cover, featuring Anna Wintour, was leaked on the web ahead of the launch. At the time there was rampant speculation about what the magazine, dubbed the “culture of fashion”, might actually be like. Industry site Styleite said they were ‘waiting with bated breath to thumb through its 196 pages’; Sassybella implored its readers to ‘hunt down a copy and find out who’s on the masthead’; whilst members of fashion forum The Fashion Spot wondered who took the cover photo of Wintour. Everyone seemed to agree that this was going to be a unique magazine for the fashion business. And it is . The Business of Fashion reported that it ‘is the first and only media title dedicated to going behind the scenes to chronicle the personalities, stories and defining moments in the world of fashion’. They further explained ‘It’s like the fashion industry’s version of a high-school yearbook, except seriously more stylish and elegant, showcasing the fashion industry’s stars in their best light’. The second issue is due out in October, although exactly when is yet to be revealed. Luckily for SFTW readers our friends at Saturday have promised to give everyone a heads up, so you too can be industry insiders.

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The latest issue of London underground youth-pop culture magazine The latest issue of London underground youth-pop culture magazine Super Super is emblazoned with a cover that broadcasts ‘The Rise of Generation Cult’. Read on and apparently this new generation is going to react to the ‘palpable restlessness in the air’ and is all too aware that we and indeed the planet are on ‘ borrowed time’ and that a ‘change has gotta come’. The magazine article goes on to reconcile a breakdown of the cultural economy with the real one and predicts the last of the youth culture movements whose evolutionary glory is crowned when they become a section in Topshop. So does this mean a retreat underground? Not necessarily. They think ‘Generation Cult’ will bring new wave of cultural shifts and trends that will be about subtlety, association and consideration. No more ‘me statements’ but an ear and eye for the collective mood. Generation Cult is over being angry, not out of apathy but because of a wider global awareness. And that’s because at its most positive the ‘cultish’ provokes a sense of attention to detail, emotion, touch, passion, faith, connection, experience community, belonging and perhaps in equal measure positive exclusion i.e., ‘we won’t stand for that anymore’.
This isn’t just the stuff of pop culture magazines either. Findings by trend consultancy The Future Laboratory offer interesting parallels. Their 2010 Retail report cite community values, preference for the local, the climate, ethics, quality, and friends and family as rising concerns for consumers. At Mother we’ve pondered what might Generation Cult mean For Brands. Undoubtedly it will mean earning access, and access via some cultural ‘off-roading’. There will be no bluffing. It will help to have friends on the inside.

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This week we were intrigued by the discovery that Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo has recently adopted what appears to be a ‘cultish’ service strategy.  Renowned for its innovative advertising platforms and smart utilization of social media,  The New York Magazine reports that they have created a scientific formula for how their employees interact with customers. Calling it a ‘singular spoken mandate’, every day every Uniqlo store worldwide, customer advisers repeat what are known as ‘the six standard phrases’ whilst on floor. The advisers pair off, and repeat: “Hello, my name is Uniqlo, how are you today?”; “Did you find everything you were looking for?” ; “Let me know if you need anything. My name is …..”; “Thank you for waiting.”, “Did you find everything you were looking for?”; and finally “Good-bye, we hope to see you again soon.” Each customer is expected to hear at least four of these phrases (of course, with the advisers’ own names) as they go about their shopping excursion. The second and fifth are repeated because they are required at two points—on the floor, and at checkout. The verbal tactics are only small piece of Uniqlo’s strategy. Physical design and aesthetic, too, are paramount. Uniqlo employees are tested regularly on in-store action items and executions, even being offered incentives to maintain the official organizational mantra: ALWAYS FOLLOW COMPANY DIRECTION. DO NOT WORK IN YOUR OWN WAY. Whilst it’s all a bit creepy, this approach to customer service and sales strategy is clearly working, the brand has enjoyed four years of growth despite the recession.

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