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When that result came up on search engine computer in Warrington big Waterstone’s, I was a bit surprised. Until six months ago neither Borders or Waterstone’s or WHSmiths knew that book. It’s normal, I suppose, since it’s a foreign book. Then Borders UK disappeared because of the credit crunch, but there are still the two main libraries selling it all around the country.
It’s a real pity that that book is still in Italian.

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Isn’t it brilliant?
The first time I saw British advertisements on London Tube and bus stops I was astonished. Messages inside cannot keep you from understanding the hidden meaning of what they’re really showing.
Indeed, ads in the UK rarely talk openly about the real message. They rather prefer to use metaphors and alternative images. It’s brain business to process them and take off the message. Frequently it’s just a matter of few instants: the meaning is hidden, but ad is so brilliant that you catch it with just a blink of an eye. A kinda of psychological blackmail, both in a positive and in a negative sense.
Some examples? Showing a mother tenderly hugging her children and saying “I take care of their healt” and, below, a few lines telling readers that she’s decided to stop smoking. More, an ad on the back of mancunian buses showing a toddler saying just “Thank you, mom!” and, beside, few sentences explaining that his mother has stopped drinking because she wanted to be clear-headed while with her son.
On the opposite side, there are also ads that absolutely don’t care about people’s sensibility. Showing a rotten liver or lung or stomach just to explain through images the meaning of getting a cancer because of too much alchool, smoke or fat foods is not the best way to gain people’s attention.
Anyway, the one above belongs to smart ads category. A very nice idea, also considering that it’s been produced to help customers to save their money. In Italy they’d surely show a message able to get the opposite result. But in the UK there are then tons of ways to get that saved money back. And there are no ads at all telling customers that’s happening.

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Lewis’s has been operating since 1856. It’s a massive store in the heart of Liverpool city centre. As they say in their homepage, it has been an unexpected closure due to financial crisis.
It’s not just an old store closing down. It’s a sign of what’s happening in the UK too. Italy already had to say goodbye to many important plants such as FIAT’s Termini Imerese and Bialetti, just to make a couple of examples.
Credit crunch is going forward and small cities are hardly trying to tread water to survive.