Can a country have a color scheme?

It sounds crazy, but I think that New Zealand might have a color scheme. Either that or they are all hiring the same advertising agency.

Across the spectrum of businesses, from the kiwi versions of e-bay and amazon.com to banks and insurance companies there’s a thread running through their branding that projects a youthful, modern image that seems at odds with the reality of life on the coast. See, before I arrived here I was told by several folks that coming to the west coast was like stepping back in time several decades. In many ways this has been true.

Take the sinks for example. When I was looking for a place to live, I found virtually nowhere with the modern-day single-faucet style of sinks. Everywhere is still operating on the older separated hot/cold faucet regime. It sucks. Truly. My mom thinks of them as nostalgic, as this is what she grew up with. I think of this as the exquisite 'scald or freeze' method of torture. Not to be the princess and the pea here, but to wash my hands or do dishes, I have to plug the sink, and run a science experiment until the water approaches a reasonable temperature to put my hands in. I know, it’s not a major hardship in life, but it just seems to me that the world’s modern features are passing us by down here. And it lends to the stepping back in time theory of coastal life.

Why else do I think I’m living in the past? Well, we still have door-to-door salesmen here. Didn’t they die out with Willy Loman? I guess not – as folks stop in our office with some frequency. The OfficeMax sales rep came through with a hot special on office chairs, conveniently timed to when I started and was looking for just such an item. (The nearest OfficeMax is over in Christchurch, three hours away, so trying out different chairs involved weeks of waiting for delivery of trial chairs...) Then there was the unfortunately nick-named “toilet lady” who came through on her South Island circuit to let us know about the latest and greatest in hybrid flush toilet tank systems. A strange one to me is the periodic delivery of a pile of books to a table in our conference room. This is a completely random selection of cookbooks, kids books, calendars, whatever, which are left with an envelope for orders and cash. Next delivery day if there is an order, they take the money, leave the book and a new stack of a dozen or so random treats for us to consider.

But my favorite roving salespeople so far have been this pair of 20-something engineering students who stopped by a week or so ago, making the rounds to the city government offices, highway department and us, at DOC. They were quite snazzy, with one wearing a tie and sweater, the other dressed like a cowboy heading out for a night on the town – with fancy silk shirt, tight jeans and snake-leather shoes. They dropped in to sell us – trash cans. For real. They hadn’t quite designed their new trash cans yet, they had no brochures or drawings to share. They were just curious if we’d be interested. After letting them know we support a pack-it-in pack-it-out ethic and therefore avoid having trash cans in most of our sites, I put them in touch with the fellas who collect the trash where we do have trash cans to see if there were features we might want them to include in their revolutionary new designs. Far be it from me to squelch their entrepreneurial spirit.

Another way the coast is a bit behind is in the commercial sector. Greymouth pretty much shuts down after 5 on work days, and by noon on Saturday. Don’t even try to do much on a Sunday here. Granted some of the restaurants and the grocery stores are open a bit later, and the library keeps long hours until 8 pm one night a week, but overall it does feel a lot like Mayberry here.

So – how does all this relate to the color scheme? Well, when I first arrived here, it was a major shift from big city, big office, to small town, small office. The pace slowed down. I really was entering Mayberry, in a way – not just the town, but the time zone. But at the same time, I was struck by brand logos for companies here that were full of lower case fonts and bright monochrome colors. To me, they felt new, young, fresh, modern. I’m not sure why that is – ask a marketing specialist – the folks who design color schemes at McDonald’s to make you want to eat and leave quickly. Whatever the reason these colors and fonts made me feel this way, there were so many that fit the pattern that I started to take note.

It’s not as if I pay attention to branding or advertising consciously, though if you ask anyone I’ve ever been on a road trip with, they’ll tell you I read signs everywhere. And yes, I’ve been taken with several adverts here in NZ, even shared them with you on this blog. That’s because they were funny. Others that I’ve seen here have outright pissed me off – the one for a product that will make a woman’s underarms more attractive to her partner comes to mind, as if people should be worrying about that in this crazy world.

I suppose that the youthful, modern feel of the all the branding struck me because they imply we’re in the 21^st century, when so many of the signs here in Greymouth were telling me the opposite. Is there really a national color scheme trying to convince me or others that kiwi culture is modern? No. But having picked up on this pattern, I’m going to keep noticing more examples. I can’t really help myself. And as I wander down the street this afternoon (it’s Saturday here as I write this), when I see the Kiwibank and AMI insurance storefronts – they'll be closed. I'll feel both connected to and conscious of the distance of the modern world that exists over the mountains and elsewhere in NZ. Here in my little town, I’ll content myself with stunning views and friendly folks. And perhaps soon, spiffy new trash cans.