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U P C LO S E A N D P E R S O N A L

!is is an exciting time to be in the branding business. Who are some of the shining lights in your opinion? If you mean which corporations are developing effective brand identities for themselves, then I would say that most corporations are getting it right and wrong at the same time. Allow me to explain.

Sigmund Freud hypothesised that the human personality comprises a trilogy of components: the Ego, the Super Ego and the Id. The Id is the motivator of the human survival instinct. Perpetual Expansion is the active expression of the human survival instinct in motion. Every dimension of civilisation and the ecosystemic complexity we have created is founded upon the notion of the Continuous Expansion process. It has transported us across oceans to new continents and finally, upward and into the outer space. But…global warming has exposed the physical impossibility of Continuous Expansion, the untenable nature of our current human condition.

Freud observed that the absolute mission for all living organisms is to return to the state of inertia from whence they came.

This he called the Thanatos Complex or Death Wish. The logical corollary to this is that if the relative objective of the human survival mechanism is self-preservation, then its ultimate objective must therefore be self-destruction. Remember that 99% of all the living things that have ever roamed the Earth are now extinct. The corporation is also a living organism and therefore subject to the same existential conditions, which means that the corporations’ agenda is also ultimately self-destruction.

This is why the corporation is “getting it wrong” by continuing to develop brands that are relevant only to the outmoded corporate agenda. Instead, corporations should be focusing on the principle of Continuous Equilibrium.

What are some of your favourite projects to date? The Cooper Square Hotel is my favourite recent brand work because it is intellectually robust. Three necessary factors were identified as key to the success of the [project]: design, service and integration into Manhattan’s downtown creative culture.

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-DAVID OMI IS, IN A WORD,

SHARP. THE EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF GROW

IN QATAR HAS CRAFTED AND GUIDED THE IDENTITIES OF

SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS BRANDS, INCLUDING ALEXANDER MCQUEEN AND AMERICAN EXPRESS. GIFTED

WITH A CREATIVE AND THOUGHTFUL NATURE, OMI

DOESN’T MISS A BEAT, TAKING AN INCISIVE VIEW OF THE

WORLD WE LIVE IN AND THE BRANDS WE OBSESS OVER.

HE SPOKE TO US ABOUT THE BRANDING OF QATAR AND

SOME OF HIS FAVOURITE PROJECTS TO DATE.

-

David Omi

Breaking with convention, the Cooper Square marketing collateral uses atypical imagery to express the allure of the hotel, namely, its location in New York’s Lower East Side. Instead of portraying convention rooms, the front lobby and other hotel amenities, the marketing material consists of photographs taken around the Cooper Square neighbourhood of the Lower East Side, using the spirit of place as a theme to create a communications piece that is truly unique.

I was also charged with creating interior environments and an identity for New York City’s first “green” boutique hotel, [Greenhouse 26]. Avoiding the superficial and commercialised “green experience,” I created a brand and interior that embraces the brutal and savage beauty of nature. Minimalism is contrasted with rich colours and textures. The graphics and messaging are inspired by the role time plays in nature as explored through romanticised decay, reclamation, rusts and patina.

You designed a brand identity for Alexander McQueen which perfectly captures his work’s subversive quality. Was the brand ethos easy to connect with? Was he easy to connect with? Of course! Lee [McQueen] was what we Brits call a “geeza.” My initial briefing sessions with him involved the two of us, my then-girlfriend and the late Issey Blow, spending long nights in London’s East End clubs. The words “brand” and “ethos” never entered the conversation.

It was at this time seeing him in action as a person that the idea of presenting him to the fashion world as some kind of a cultural contradiction came to my mind. The essence of Lee’s brand manifested itself on the back of a cigarette packet after a good old chat in a noisy bar.

Were there any challenges in working with McQueen? Absolutely none when it came to dealing with McQueen. He knew exactly what he needed to do. His imperative was to make excellent clothes that reflected the zeitgeist. I understood his mission, end of story. The challenges came when he began to accrue “clipboard guardians.” All of a sudden, he was surrounded by a myriad of hangers-on and yes-men/women with all manner of agendas.

I remember seeing him from a distance at one of his shows once. His expression read: I am being eaten alive and there is nothing I can do about it. Gradually his purpose became less and less pure and increasingly unclear to him.

The enormous queue of people lining up to see the last of Alexander McQueen’s exhibition at the New York Met was conspicuous in the sense that hardly anyone appeared to have any discernible fashion sense. So why were they there? My suspicion is that Sarah Jessica Parker, patron saint of bridge and tunnel, had something to do with this massive throng of Bieber and Gaga wannabes. Once inside, I found myself surrounded by a myriad of Upper East Side matriarchs oohing and aahing over what amounted to glorified female bondage gear. At the show I suddenly felt very protective of Lee for some reason, and angry too. To see all these people, the Gagas and the Bjorks of this world, getting cheap publicity by declaring their undying admiration for a guy they never knew, postmortem, sickened me.

Lee was an innocent, and he endured a slow, agonising descent into creative absurdity courtesy of the fashion world’s venality and vacuity. He started out strong of mind and singular in his purpose. He ended up creating American football-inspired fashion with a Hokusai-esqe motif and glorified female bondage gear…

Of course the retort to this will be, “Nonsense, he understood the female form and psyche completely.” [Yet] those shoes he designed, the ones that look like an elephant seal’s nostrils, are medical stirrups in disguise aren’t they? They impede and retard a woman’s progress in the world, quite literally. Have you ever seen video of his models trying to walk down a runway in those things? It’s hilarious to watch.

I think the NYC Met’s Alexander McQueen show should have been realised as a daily, live fashion event with real models on a runway. There was something woefully self-defeating about presenting his fashion behind glass using tailor’s dummies, something depressingly corporeal about the whole event. An event that missed the entire point of what should have been its natural objective, which was to convey and celebrate the spirit of Alexander McQueen.

What does Qatar need to take into account when creating and launching homegrown brands? All Qatari brands, both nascent and real, should align with and reflect the tenets of the Qatar National Vision. Branding is all about manipulating human perceptions of reality, creating illusions around physical existences. Right now the Qatar National Vision is an illusion, a very compelling and beautiful illusion nevertheless.

In order for it to become a reality, Qatari businesses and brands must act in ways that are relevant to the tenets of the vision. Having said that, Qatari businesses should also understand that any brands they choose to build will be perceived, for better or worse, as being inextricably linked to Islam and the ongoing socio-economic circumstances of the MENA region.

Qatar shouldn’t be in a hurry to ape or import Western culture. When I come to Doha I love to go to the souq, not the InterContinental Hotel. Any “westernised” businessman [arriving in] Doha cannot fail to see Qatar’s cultural dichotomy – the endeavour to reconcile the modesty of Islam and its formative influence upon contemporary Arab life, with the contradictory social impositions of the western way of being and its all-consuming nihilism and permissiveness.

Qatar has instigated a process that will result in the actualisation of a model society, one that will hopefully serve to shine a light and guide the way for all humanity. So in 2022, when the world comes to call, Qatar had better be walking the “National Vision” talk or Qatar’s credibility on the world stage is going to suffer.

Are there any brands still on your wishlist to work with? I’d like to have a go at rebranding the Gap. Seriously, what happened there? I think the BBC needs to recover some of its “This is the BBC World Service” benign authoritative shtick. [And] I’d love to start gearing up Qatar Airways for the World Cup.

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