NeverNeverMind

Adidas - Impossible is $200

2007-03-15T21:43:00.000-04:00

Those of you who know me, know the slogan:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VACATION AND VOCATION IS O

which I created at the Banff Centre in May, 2006.

Well, check out Addidas new "Impossible is O" campaign. Evidently O is the new black!

I like this ad not only because it uses a syntax I feel I personally invented :) but because it uses athletes as "artists". This one's with Gilbert Arena and there's one with David Beckham painting a painting too. I also like the documentary treatment of their "stories" that fleshes the campaign out. It is almost shocking too that these guys seem to be able to create pretty good art, tho' really that could be just faked by the agency.

What I like more though is Stephon Marbury's endorsement of a $15 court shoe called the Starbury... Marbury is campaigning for shoes that parents, and teenagers can actually afford, an absolutely awesome concept. What I like less about the Adidas campaign is that I'm still paying and paying and paying for all this creativity in the price of brand-name runners. Naomi Klein, in her book No Logo, actually itemizes the percentage of consumer price that pays for marketing. I'll have to look that up, but we know it's high, very high.

So kudos to Adidas for syntactic imagination, but really the campaign should read Impossible is $2OO.

Sopranos Vista

2007-03-12T19:42:00.000-04:00

Gosh, but I AM straying far afield. Focus, Rob, focus. Aw fuck it!

My local ISP, Rogers, just notified me by email that they are having "problems" with the Vista upgrade and that they are "working with" Microsoft... that sounds an awful lot like an episode of the Sopranos in which a local landscaper loses a Sopranos-related client to a crime-related competitor and asks the Sopranos.org (local boss) for "help"; resulting in him getting back his contract... at a cost of 50% of his revenues... ouch!

now, I don't know from Microsoft, but how much is Rogers going to have to pay Microsoft I wonder?

Bill, if you're listening, please, there's time, you CAN change the world, just not in the way you think.

(visual) quieting - life after cars

2007-03-08T23:14:00.000-05:00

What will we do when the streets are empty?

Please contribute your ideas by way of comments or by sending me an email to adminATkloojDOTnet. Thanks!

[ img src ]

We'll ride bicyles!

[ img src ]

We'll find other uses for cars and parking lots:

[ src: Just Add Water event by Samantha Crowhurst and Leah Sandals ]

[ src img: more about Adrian Blackwell ]

Microsoft - the invisible possibilities ads

2007-03-08T00:22:00.000-05:00

This is a good example of how the attempt to render a positive by portraying a negative can backfire. Here, a black waitress is shown without (outline only) the graduation cap and degree that is presumed to be necessary for her to get a better job. The ad assumes a lot of things, like that higher education is an automatic ticket to a better job and a better life, that college grads don't end up working in diners, and that people who work in diners all want to work somewhere else. The ad copy "We see..." attempts to correct the image, to explain the invisible cap and degree as "potentials," achievable with Microsoft's help, which is all well and good, but really what the ad is showing us is a happy waitress in a nice diner who doesn't need a higher education.

I also question who these ads are talking to. If they're in Harper's or The Atlantic, then they are preaching to the converted, talking to people who already have post-secondary education, validating that education as an objective for and attainable by working people.

These ads are a little old now, but might they not be considered an indication of Microsoft's increasing disconnection from reality, now crystalized in the brilliant Apple vs. PC comparative advertising campaign? But more about those later.

visual quieting - at what point does marketing start to work against itself

2007-03-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

The increasing price of consumer goods is largely due to marketing and delivery costs. Companies have learned that marketing pays off, especially once they reach the global scale. This cost effectiveness of marketing is what feeds the increasingly overwhelming clutter of billboards, print and other materials we face every day.

At what point is enough enough? Does brand awareness ever get sufficient that marketing budgets can be safely trimmed back, optimized so that companies start to become more responsible about the "cultural noise" they are creating.

Nike running shoes, for example, could cost substantially less if you bought them direct online from Nike. And I don't need to see another Nike ad for at least several years.

So, for example, take Nike's own numbers:
--
Consumer pays: $90
Retailer pays: $45 to NIKE, and then doubles the price for retail.
NIKE pays: $22.50 and then doubles the price to retailers for shipping, insurance, duties, R&D, marketing, sales, administration and profits.
The $22.50 price paid the factory includes: Materials: $14.60; Labor: $3.37; Overhead: $3.41; Factory Profit: $1.12; Total Costs: $22.50
[ source ]
--

and get rid of the retailer and the marketing:

Consumer pays: 33.00 direct to Nike
This eliminates the retailer (disintermediation) and much marketing so the price comes down to somewhere between 22.50 and 45.00... split the difference. This also opens room up so people assembling the shoes could be paid better, Labor is a pitiably small portion of the cost of production according to the document above. How much sense does that make?

zefrank is one damned media savvy dude; check out ...

2007-03-02T12:56:00.000-05:00

zefrank is one damned media savvy dude; check out this video on brand emotional aftertaste.

Not as cleverly crtical but awesome in his depth of knowledge and almost-over-the-top radio voice, Terry O'Reilly does a show called the Age of Persuasion on CBC radio (Saturday, 4 p.m.), and has just started a new blog: http://www.oreillyradio.com/

It's tax time, feeling tied up in knots?

2007-03-02T10:39:00.000-05:00

One the finest ways that advertising reveals truths about our culture is when it shows a problem in order to claim the solution to that problem for its product or service. The Canada Revenue Agency, a.k.a. Revenue Canada, for example, wants you to believe that they will make tax time so easy you won't have to have the flexibility of a gymnast to get through it, or that their online tools will make it so easy it will be as if you had the abilities of a gymnast. What the ad really tells us is "you can't do this". Go on, I dare you to try that pose.

And while we're talking about the tax dept. why'd they change the name? We used to have Heritage Canada, Industry Canada and others, names that had a professional feel and that put the title of what they were about ahead of Canada... Canada Revenue Agency is so utilitarian, opaque, bureaucratic, a gulag of naming.

Hands in my pockets - Capital One

2007-02-22T19:00:00.000-05:00

This is a series of TV spots showing banker-types following normal folks around in all sort of daily activities with their hands in their pockets. Like they are stealing, continuously, every minute of every day, in every situation. Like pick pockets, but without the craftiness.

I think these ads are only in Canada because I can't find the video anywhere on the Web. But Capital One's "Hands in my pockets" series has not only delivered a memorable jingle, known and loved (and hated by those who can't get it out of their heads) by all, but they've made a stunning indictment of Canada's Big 5 banks, who charge higher interest rates than anybody.

The gamble is that "truth in advertising" doubles back and bites them, along with their targets, in the ass. Basically, everyone hates credit gouging and the greed, disrespect, narcissism, cynacism and corruption it represents. Note to Capital One, you want our respect (and business)? Live up to your promise of a real alternative.

Whatever, we this ad.

The great irony of it is that the song, by Jim Guthrie (link below) is plural, handS in my pocketS, not hand in my pocket as the images show in the ad, and is a very sweet song about walking around with your hands in your pockets. It's dreamy and the way the ad couples it up with a hateful thing banks do is... well... brilliant, the best advertising can do combining sweet and sour, threatening and securing at the same time.

"So I forced my hands in my pockets
And felt with my thumbs,
And gallantly handed her
My very last piece of gum."
- Bob Dylan 4th Time Around

who's got it totally wrong

sorry, you can't criticize advertising properly if you're trying to get a job in advertising

view and rate TV ads - this is great site, performing a great service... Thank you!

wierd cutting edge video shit

e.g. this is why we all LOVE to drive cars and won't stop, no matter pretty much whatever...

re: prison, see my last post on the Globe and Mail ad campaign

at least somebody is paying attention to Capital One ads in video

Yet more hands in my pockets stuff:

the song, by Jim Guthrie

about the ad

about the issues

funny-cute rip off...

Pity the poor CBC, the Canadian broadcasting service, aka "the mothership" for having some good, if beside the point info about songwriters and the commercial biz

Criticizing advertising - Prison (Globe and Mail Ultimate Home Makeover)

2007-02-17T11:08:00.000-05:00

I've been wanting to create a place for critizing advertising, so for the next few months this is going to be that place. I'm not interested in the moral-high-ground type of criticism, as important as that may be, but in criticism that sees the critical meanings underneath the obvious messages, in TV ads in particular.

To get things started: Some of you will be familiar with my text, Prison, presented at the Banff Centre last May. Well check this out; seems I'm not the only one who thinks the middle class is a form of prison, or that prison-culture is the reality of the future. And we thought debtors prison was a thing of the past.

Globe and Mail newspaper, Ulimate Home Makeover, February, 2007
the above TV spot is online here.
There are three TV spots all together in this series, accessible from here.

other resources:

Dr. Christopher Johnson's insightful criticism of corporate names:
TheNameInspector.co blog
about it

The kind of criticism my posts won't be like:

Suicide prevention group protests Superbowl ad.
The ad they are protesting and where you can also view and rate other Superbowl ads — about the ad: a poignant reflection on the current grim conditions of work (we are robots) and how self-esteem is wrapped up in employment (lose your job and you're going to want to commit suicide) and what motivates people (your daydream of failure, ending in suicide will drive you to become a perfectionist). As if that were not enough, the anthropomorphising of the robot, which is given an imagination (tries to find other work) and emotions (experiences despair), reflects something very creepy about technology.

defenders of advertising, essay

advertising and social values, esssay

massive change

2007-02-13T00:41:00.000-05:00

You've heard about it. The premise is that the world is changing massively. And that such massive change is necessary if we are to survive as species on this planet.

That's a lot to absorb. Personally you have to admit a lot of things are changing, and the pace and scale of change is pretty, well, massive, but...

two things:

1. massive change kind of assumes we need to change a lot in order to stay the same, e.g., the current climate-sort-of-situation; we want to keep that, or at least avoid hurricanes in New Orleans and windstorms in Vancouver, and

2. we are in control... this is the whole premise of the captital M massive and capital C change... that "design" will be the way we orchestrate and manage change, and design, being a function of control-types, like CEOs, and NASA, doesn't really have too much to do with you and me.

however, I predict it will be not long before them, named above, and us start talking not about how to control change, but about how to adapt to change... e.g.

- no warming Gulf Stream, i.e., a much colder Europe and UK...
- melted polar ice caps and higher ocean levels worldwide... stilts anyone?
- depleted oceans as a food source... pass the rice...
- no Oxygen producing rain forests (lungs of the planet)... cough, cough
etc. etc.

the fact is the disconnect between West and East and developed and developing worlds is too profound to be overcome within my lifetime... but, being an eternal optimist, let's consider some things that we (you and me) might, together, massively change, the first of which I proposed some time ago here:
dog treats and grooming pay for Katrina's costs

So, let's look at the stats and find the nickels and dimes among our millions and billions that can, actually, produce change.

For ref: www.massivechange.com/

United Church ad campaign / Wonder Cafe review

2006-11-21T00:36:00.000-05:00

You don't need to believe in God to enjoy the United Church of Canada's new ad campaign. Where can I get me one of those for my dash!

That said, I have some serious misgivings about the ad campaign and the related website Wondercafe.ca. One imagines that the UCC wouldn't invest $10M if they didn't strongly believe that it was going to put more bums in pews. I find it hard to believe that the UCC even has that kind of do re mi but that's a topic for another time... Anyway, it's a big investment and for what?

Does it show the UCC to be hip? Hipper than most, mostly... but practically not everywhere; congregations vary widely.

Does hip translate into interest in attending church? Maybe. It can't hurt, though I imagine there are those who would argue that hipness is actually counter-religious, like liberalism, a kind of softening of moral values. Maybe a lot of people are looking for that kind of experience, a sort of cool hanging around religion to see if any of it rubs off. Works for me.

Does it matter? Yes, if your concern is to keep the doors of the Church open. Yes, if you believe that people are better off with religion than not (and there's LOTS of evidence to support that theory) and that getting their attention is worth any amount of effort. But not if you think that getting people's attention this way, through big media (corporate, centralized, manipulative and mercenary, without any real moral foundation) is pretty much anti-Christian at its very root.

Conclusion about the ad campaign: Like most advertising, creating brand recognition produces benefits but maybe not in the ways or at the time you expected.

Wonder Cafe is another story. It's a really nicely designed site, though the type is maddeningly small and brown as a motif is a little on the scatological side. But the site has plenty of features; a weekly poll, a topical essay by someone prominent each week, a discussion area for that topic; a "discussion lounge" where you can comment on some pre-set themes like Parenting, Politics or Health, and an area where you can create your own topics. Called blogs, the latter are not really blogs. Your first post stays at the top and people comment, or you add your own subsequent thoughts, below... not a "log" at all really, which makes you wonder how knowledgable the folks who decided to call it that are. Also, once you start your "blog" you are stuck with that first post at the top, can't edit it. Have another idea and you have to start over again with a new "blog". And the first blog, well, it drifts down to the bottom, as each new blog created goes at the top of all the blogs created. So far there are 83. I started mine the day after the ads came out. It was no. 5, but given the reverse chronilogical ordering, it's now no. 78. Buried basically. Nobody's going to discover it at this point. All I can do, if I actually want people to read what I might write there, is to delete it (which I can do, yea!) and start over (boo!)

The E-Z Squirrel animation is kinda funny and got some media attention. And the ad campaign materials are there too, which would be useful from a general info-on-the-Web perspective if the whole thing wasn't in Flash. The ads and all these other cool features don't have unique URLs so you can't bookmark them, return to them directly, send specific pages to your friends. Unless you like trying to unravel such things by looking at source code, in which case you can locate some discrete bits of content, like the bobble-head Jesus .jpg.

There's also this wierd sort of internal email thing. If you register you get a "mailbox" and can send mail to other registered users. It's another level of possible interaction I suppose but I don't really get what it's for when the whole idea of the blog thing is to talk "publicly."

So notwithstanding the lame "blog" effort and the vague "email" thing, it's a pretty full featured experience. You could spend quite a bit of time there surfing around, leaving comments, for sure.

But will you? I don't think so. After the novelty wears off, I don't think people who really want, on a regular basis, to turn over various issues in a religious context are going to go there. There are lots of other venues for that type of discussion and they aren't organized by churches.

This is going to be an expensive site to maintain and my feeling is it will run its course in maybe 6 to 8 months and it'll take the UCC a year or more after that to realize it isn't being productive and pull the plug.

While it may sound old school, this ain't going to be the Slashdot of progressive religion.

steal from the rich, sell to the poor

2006-11-20T23:32:00.000-05:00

dunno if this relates, but you gotta love the Sunday NYT, a copyright story right up there on p. 1... a painter of sports pics getting sued by a university for using "their colours"... 'course he is putting his images on coffee mugs, for which he probably should be sued, for bad taste... too bad the NYT doesn't leave their stories up for more than a second anymore.

Think Globally, Shop Locally

2006-09-04T23:39:00.000-04:00

I came up with this slogan, "think globally, shop locally" a long long time ago. Finally, it's come up... a little shy of irony, but nonetheless:

Our local rag, the Globe and Mail, had a book review Sat. that for the first time that I know of, mentioned the concept... actually, the author, Alanna Mitchell, says "think globally by buying locally" which is where the irony gets lost, but I'll take it anway.

The bubble - type, trope, trip

2006-07-22T23:43:00.000-04:00

Tomas Saraceno's interactive thingamajigs.

above: Superstudio's City of the Hemispheres

Archigram's moving units, Seaside Bubbles (still looking for this one online)

Yona Friedman's spatial cities

art theory, learning by watching, learning from seeing

2006-08-21T16:05:00.000-04:00

How we learn from art, if indeed we do, is NOT learning by watching, which applies in sports and other kinds of physical activity. In art, it is more a matter of learning from seeing.

So what do we learn by looking at art? It would be fun to argue that people would not have an appetite for all the bad modernist condominium buildings sprouting up all over the world unless they had first embraced Ikea, which itself would not have been possible without years of systematic promotion of abstract art by our cultural institutions.

It would also be fun to argue that only after years of postmodern head softening could religious fundamentalism and right-wing politics resurface without irony.

Learning by seeing

2006-08-20T21:04:00.000-04:00

It is the folly of art criticism to search for the positive benefits of art. We read it time and time again; art edifies, instructs, points to (often uncomfortable) "truth"... and so the stage is set, comfortable vs. uncomfortable... none of this is meaningful. Art is. Artist after artist will tell you so, or fail "to explain."

That said (as if we could proceed without judgment) what art may do, is demonstrate. My friend Ben has invented a term, objectivate, to describe what artists do. Not "objectify:" we know what that means, but to show something, a meaning, a feeling, an idea, through production, of a thing, action, event...

It is difficult to say this without making it sound like an explanation, a justification, that art may serve a purpose. It doesn't, or rather this question, purpose or non-purpose, misses the point. Yet, still, we know practically nothing about how we learn and how we "know." Visuality, or visualness, are aspects of experience that are, to say the least, poorly understood. So maybe there is something there, in art, about learning.

"...Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realties, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist. Althusser said that one always catches the world's train on the move; Deleuze, that "grass grows from the middle" and not from the bottom or the top. The artist dwells in the circumstances the present offers him, so as to turn the setting of his life (his links
with the physical and conceptual world) into a lasting world. He catches the world on the move: he is a tenant of culture, to borrow Michel de Certeau's expression'."
- Relational Aesthetics - Nicolas Bourriaud (1998)

actually, forming imaginary and utopian realities never was art's role, where do people come up with this shit???

still, something, about learning by watching, by seeing...

Bubble dance

2006-08-06T22:49:00.000-04:00

My friend Sarah sends this link, DRIFT.
director: Koert van Mensvoort
dance: Nancy Mauro-Flude
music: Artefact

Bubble - metaphor

2006-07-25T16:14:00.000-04:00

The bubble is used in two metaphorical ways, one positive, one negative. A bubble can be protective, like the shell that insulated Bubble Boy from his toxic surroundings. The bubble is sometimes associated with spirituality, personal energy. And the quality of complete, seemless, cohesive and elastic surface is attractive when associated with things like learning and memory.

The negative association is also common, however. Bubbles are vapourous, illusory, short-lived and burst, leaving nothing behind. Thus, we speak of economic bubbles, real estate bubbles, the dot com bubble. In some cases, the positive, protective association combines with the negative one, as in the Bush Bubble, which both protects the President while making him vulnerable because he is too insulated from opinions that matter but simply cannot reach through the bubble around him.

Other people's thinking about bubbles:

Steven Soderbergh's Bubble (2005) - "an absolutely riveting little tragedy in High Def in an Ohio doll factory, starring non-professional actors."

Sir John Everett Millais painted this painting, called "Bubbles" in 1886.

The Cyberpunk Project manifesto of 2003 ponders the bubble as a metaphor.

In corporate-speak: "Through the use of a metaphor, the research suggests that a confidentiality agreement has many similarities with the properties and characteristics of a bubble. This bubble trope is used to enhance conceptual understanding of confidentiality constraints in an organizational-change context."

And of course, there's the movie, Bubble Boy, 2001.

Babel - other references

2006-07-12T23:16:00.000-04:00

Babel #2 by David B. published by Fantagraphics.

Joey thinks Michael Kupperman and I might something in common. V. flattering. That would be me in the uniform I guess:)

Babel - theme: translation practices

2006-07-06T21:58:00.000-04:00

Although few people took up the Babel story in any literal way in their work (kind of surprising given it is about the beginning of language as we know it), a few of us worked on the periphery of it and more than a few people worked in or on translations. Simon Glass created a new translation of the Babel story, heavily annotated. I toyed with the idea of creating a tower out of magazines, maquette shown here. As we were leaving Marna Bunnell was still at work on an edition of flocked silkscreen prints that had something to do with the Rapunzel fable, an interesting connection. Others used multiple languages or versions of texts: Janice Gurney was using different translations of a paragraph from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. These translations, Simon's and my own play with the Babel story can be seen on website I built with the help of David Kretz in the CEE media lab, SwingSpace. Laurel MacMillan translated a gothic novel, now out of print, from French to English. Joey Dubuc had various people from different countries who were there on campus creating lists of words in their mother tongue using only certain characters. I'm not sure about all the different things people were doing. I'll have to ask.

Babel - theme: babble

2006-07-05T23:19:00.000-04:00

This one is more complicated, for what, these days, is not babble. Who doesn't use text in their work? Still, if the idea is the complication of language, some take that more literally than others. Manon De Pauw, Joey Dubuc, Simon Glass, Ken Singer. Then there are the punctuators: Janice Gurney, Michael Maranda, arguably Barbara Todd... Those who make works that "speak" or "tell stories": Catherine Hamel, Denise Hawrysio, Emilie O'Brien, Marna Bunnell. And finally those who use language more directly, to tell stories: J.R. Carpenter, Ashok Mathur; or talk about art: Michelle Jacques, Jessica Wyman, Laurel MacMillan. This needs further explication. Above, an object that tells a very twisted (you had to be there) sort of story.

Babel - the theme

2006-07-03T18:29:00.000-04:00

Well, the residency is done. Time for some reflection.

I never really took the theme of this residency that seriously. I mean, every artist involved works with text, but beyond that, the question what exactly we were there for never came up. Which was fine. I learned alot, made new friends and created a lot of new work.

There were some "Babel-like" commonalities. Billy Mavreas introduced us to the term "asemic writing", which was found in most people's work at some point and in other's more so: Sylvia Ptak's thread-pulls, Ernie Kroeger's beetle drawings, Adrianna Riquer Turner's wall mark tracings, perhaps even Ken Singer's new "landscapes," and Rachelle Viader Knowles text fragments, which appear also in this month's YYZine.

So Babel, the confusion of languages was one possible thread.
Babble was perhaps another, different thread.
Rabble yet another.
More about these later.

Babel - theme: rabble

2006-07-05T00:45:00.000-04:00

The word rabble suggests an identification with, or criticism of popular culture or "the masses" (the rabble). It also suggests a theme of social justice: which Wikipedia says is about giving individuals or groups their due within society as a whole.

Laurie Ljubojevic's work, shown here, where she uses newspapers, found posters, or money as the substrate for her dots, comments on popular culture, the media, commodities, money, etc. Billy Mavreas' work where he rips and mixes found materials works that way, as do Nate Larson's paranormal parodies. Joey Dubuc's child-like narratives are full of both hi and low art/pop culture references, as is Joni Murphy's poetry, John Richey's animations, Melisandre Schofield's imaginary school of personas, and Adrianna Riquer Turner's "pinatas." My own His Master's Voice dog and gramophone cartoons fall loosely into this category also.

btw Rabble.ca is a Canadian social justice-oriented news website. Those folks incidentally run a community bulletin board called babble.

Babel - corporate identity and The Banff Centre

2006-06-21T19:15:00.000-04:00

On the flight out to Banff I was thinking about what kind of experience I was going to have, why I was coming. In particular, I was curious about the idea of a "residency". What is an "artist-in-residence?" I mean, are you going on "retreat" for a reclusive experience where you can concentrate totally on "your work" or are you going somewhere to work "as an artist" in the sense of performing artistically within a specific context. By inclination, I lean (like Mt. Rundle) toward the latter. Theoretically, I subscribe to the view that art is always contextual in the sense of operating with and against the conditions in which it is produced.

There was the circumstance of the place, Banff, a vacation destination in the middle of a most picturesque mountain landscape. Without concluding anything, I puzzled over the idea that the experience would be part "vacation" and part work or "vocation," part spa holiday, part intensive work experience. These things don't reconcile easily, and their contradiction has informed pretty much everything I have done here.

In the margins of the book I was reading on the flight out, "rhythm science" by Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky), I wrote a slogan for my forthcoming experience "THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VACATION AND VOCATION IS O."

During the residency, I continued to write slogans while also playing around with the logo. I should say that I didn't have any intention here to seriously engage in a design process - art is not design - but to (seriously) reflect on the situation, to mirror back the conditions in which I found myself.

Babel - Elysium - Elysian Fields

2006-06-01T08:27:00.000-04:00

Elysium. In Greek mythology, the abode of the blessed, paradise. Situated at the end of the world it is here that those chosen by the gods are sent to.

Virgil's Elysium knows perpetual spring and shady groves, with its own sun and lit by its own stars: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt (Aeneid, 6.541).

The Elysian fields, or sometimes Elysian plains, were the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous....The Elysian Fields lay on the western margin of the earth, by the encircling stream of Oceanus, and there the mortal relatives of the king of the gods were transported, without tasting death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss (Odyssey 4.563). [Wikipedia]

In Christianity, Elysium is equated with heaven.

Elysian Fields is also part of the 14th fairway on the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland, a street in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City where several of the city's best hotels and restaurants are located and in Paris the famous Champs Élysées.