NORTHERN PLANNER

So the latest in My History through 100 Objects are trainers bought in around 1990, sadly long demised.

Apart from a, now sorted,  wobble over sweat shops etc I have an irrational love for this brand. Not as a strategist mind, but as an emotionally driven human being. In fact, locically, all planners should be immune to brands, since we're supposed to know how they work, but we fall their irrational lure because we're still people with a deep need to construct and share our identity like everybody else.

Walk into any boutique agency and look at the sea of check shirts and thick rimmed glasses if you don't believe me.

Anyway.

I remember at school,it must have been around 1988, everyone had Nike Air Pegasus, but I can't say I was particularly interested until I saw this ad.

http://www.youtube.com/e/S93b-FL-VJw
 

I loved playing tennis but hated the culture that went with it in the UK.

Juniors should be seen and not heard.

We encourage you to wear white.

Does your face fit?

It's not polite to want to win.

Rules. Conformity. A bastion of middle class. I was brought up in a 'well to do' market town. Naturally I hated it.

That ad was everything I wanted in tennis. So I saved the money I earned from working in our local sports shop on weekends and bought a pair of 'Hot Lava' trainers.

Horrifically gharish and ugly. That was the point. And yes, I know how quaint it sounds, little middle class boy thinks he's a rebel buying trainers. It is silly, but brands are silly, they're irrational.

Somewhere in my subconscious, I've never forgotten how that felt and it's only been enforced by over 20 years of other ads and stuff. Despite demonstrating a rebelious streak by opening my mouth these days, rather than uniform, I still only buy Nike, anything else just wouldn't feel right.

By the way, if you know where I can get a pair of these trainers again, let me know, I'm going through some sort of grasping at youth retro thing (that's an invite for spam comments if there ever was one).