May 9, 2016 | less than a minute read

The age of Innocent copycats is over: welcome artisans

Passle

An entertaining post from Nick Parker heralding a wind of change in lazy branding: chatty Innocent-style branding is being replaced by the 'hand-crafted' movement. Watch out for large brands claiming they've hand-made or personally curated various things. I am currently hand-typing this very post, go me!

The reason why Parker calls these brands copycats is that they generally pick the tone but without implementing Innocent's top-to-bottom approach. It's all surface personality and, I'd like to think, most customers can see right through it.

We should savour this moment. The Artisan Era will not be chatty. It tends to the earnest, often mixing a sort of po-faced mindfulness with an obsessive geekiness over details. With a bit of luck, crisp packets will stop wanting to be your best friend and copywriting in general should calm down a bit. But mark my words, there are dark days ahead. It’s only a matter of time before some bank or other starts telling its customers they’ve “curated” a “small batch” of “pop-up” current accounts. And then, so help me, there will be blood.