WE NEED MORE COCKTAILS

 Every year the OED nominates a word-of-the-year. Disappointingly this year it was “toxic”- the shortlist was worse. So I’m discarding these and choosing my own.

 “Cocktail”. Because it sounds fun, variegated and intoxicating.  And mixologists are becoming as famous as football stars.

We decided to have a “cocktail of events” on Friday in London. Yes, I know, but no one told us it was Black Friday. We passed through John Lewis, parts of which look absolutely fabulous - women’s clothes and the Christmas floor – wonderfully ho, ho, ho and slightly silly. How many new brands of gin and gin cocktails concocted into Christmas presents can there be?  You should see the array on offer and countless flavours like raspberry, quince and ginger. Really useful presents like £30 collections of miniatures of port or liqueurs. Meanwhile they have an ice rink on the roof selling exotic cocktails and hot gin. Hot gin? Yes, hot gin and tonic!

And next the National Gallery where various exhibitions are on offer. Mantegna and Bellini intrigued us. Bellini. How great to have a cocktail named after you. Who else can claim that? Rather briskly my wife replied “Tom Collins and Alexander”. Neither of whom, when I checked it out, seemed to exist as a direct link from a person to the beverage.

More exotic even than the Bellini cocktail were the paintings as we shall see. The cocktail first:
* Just peel and blend your peaches, whip up your peach puree then strain it and refrigerate until cold.
* Mix 2 parts of peach puree with one part of sugar syrup.
* Add about 20ml of the peach puree mix to your Champagne flute, then gently pour Prosecco into the glass. 

“Giovanni  - get me another one … subito ”.

So who were these Bellini’s? They were the royalty of Venetian art it in 15th century Venice.  Jacopo the father ran the biggest painting workshop there.  His sons were Gentile and Giovanni. Today it’s the latter that’s considered to have been the biggest creative influence on Venetian painting. Interestingly the family workshop was  probably the first in Venice to use oil paint seriously whilst it had been in use in Northern Europe for nearly a century. Mantegna married Giovanni’s sister Nicolosia – smart move. 

The paintings are fascinating but also  have conversations with each other – clearly Bellini and Mantegna got on. The cocktail theme continued in the National Gallery as we went on to see the Impressionist exhibition. Was it because we were tired or because we were intoxicated on Bellinis?

We disliked the obsession with technique, flat colours and the boring scenes – more people sitting in a park or another lily pond.  These were not cocktails; they were alcohol free lagers of paintings after the spiritedly colourful religious works of the brothers in law that preceded them.

The Impressionists just left us with artistic hangovers.

But we are committed to living a cocktail life with lots of variety and flamboyant fun.

I WENT TO VENICE TO LOOK AT MARKETING?!

My next book is an update of my Brilliant Marketing - now in its 3rd edition. So marketing is constantly on my mind. And, anyway, it’s hard not to think of marketing in Brand-Venice which for 1500 years has created itself as the world’s first virtual city.

MARKETING

Everything Venice does is a promotional event, like the Regatta on September 4th when participants rowed in 16th century style boats down the Grand Canal. In Venice ask not for whom the bells from the 139 churches toll - they toll as part of the overall marketing of the place.

From music - Monteverdi, the Gabrielis, Vivaldi, to art - Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Bellini, Carpaccio,  to architecture - thanks Palladio, to theatre - hail Goldoni - this small city/town even has been raucously trumpeting above its size and population for a long time taking every chance to promote and dramatise itself. Venice is like a Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton or Leonardo DiCaprio - a living self-advertisement. We walk. My wife screams. Has some vile, greasy Venetian goosed her? No. It’s Sephora. It’s not in Britain but it is here - the beauty shop equivalent of WholeFoods Market = brilliantly serviced by smiling girls.

And the sweater shop not just selling pullovers but “Pull Love”.  I do love it and buy some. It’s not all good of course. There’s an advertisement for the Oxford School of English based in Venice. To reinforce its authenticity it has (wincingly) a guardsman in a busby….

I am betting which the English is here taught is so not best neither way.

All over Venice alongside more traditional outlets are fresh creations for ice- cream like Grom - it’s an amazing chain; Dal Moro’s Pasta to Go - bright, new, clean, appetising and it has a competitor - Pasta and Sugo.

There are Cicchetti bars where a glass of Chianti costs €2.50 and five great cicchetti set you back just €4. Apart from the history, the architecture and the tourists (confined to the Rialto and St Mark’s Square) what I constantly see is great marketing - super merchandising, witty copy, exceptional customer service and innovation. Odd isn’t it that in the world’s most historically intact city we keep on seeing new ideas?  The only tired and depressing aspect of Venice (apart from their mayor Giorgio Orsoni  and 35 others being arrested on corruption and money laundering charges related to the Venice flood defences) are the wretched liners and billionaires’ motor yachts with names like Enigma, Lady Good Girl, Happy Days, You’re Nicked and Wet Dream. Watching them and their languid passengers was like watching an episode of “The Night Manager”.

The New Brilliant Marketing 3E praises the power and the joy that marketing can bring. Try Venice to see how this works and always has….or read the book.

This is the second edition. The 3rd edition is unbelievably better and completely up to date. It comes out in six weeks.