how long do you give to form your perception and opinion upon encountering something you are not familiar with? how easy do you think you are influenced by the first impression when you make a decision to try a new service? what cues do you rely on to make your preliminary judgment on the assumed quality of the product or service?



this gentleman was standing on the street of stockholm holding a sign for an asian restaurant. it reminds me of the joke among my finnish colleagues about having me standing behind the ‘oriental wok’ section of our office canteen in helsinki to make it look more credible.



when does it become important for the service provider to enforce the positive association in promoting their offering? the waxing/tanning/nail salon sign is obviously held by a guy who look like he would never want such a service in oxford street, london. but the sign is held high up to make it visible in the distance even when the street is bustling with people, which may screen him from being seen.



sometimes the association may not have any logical alignment with a specific feature of the service being promoted. above is a poster for the local government election campaign in tokyo earlier this year. this candidate’s slogan holding a baby is “policy driven by residents”.



as a side thought:
any relationship between keroro and the ladies in tokyo anime fair 2008? i always wondered about the effect of having beautiful people around the product. it certainly seemed to attract more human photographers for keroro in this occasion.

i dedicated a weekend to think about story telling in preparation for a talk at the end of august in stockholm (in replacement of my esteemed colleague who was on his exploration trip). it turned out to be a good excuse for me to watch a few documentaries i had lined up for viewing.



one of them is ‘chung-kuo’ by michelangelo antonioni. it’s 207 min long, narrated by the director himself. there is something about chinese workers that melt my heart though i cannot pinpoint why. the narration is very light, not too political nor academically boring. instead it is full of visuals of people’s everyday lives that he was allowed to peek into. my favorite parts so far were when the director documents and talks about people’s view on the filming crew and their behaviors facing the camera, and when he says “it is hard to accept that chinese invented eveything, including fettuccini”.

because of its length and the lack of dramatic structure, you may find it hard to finish. but if you got the patience and the curiosity, it’s a wonderful film to watch and find glimpses of how china changed over three decades – as you probably saw a lot of images from beijing olympics last month.



both photos were taken in shanghai, china, 2008.