Niko Herzeg Marketing

complexity of life from Niko Herzeg on Vimeo.

So the clip above is from the movie Un Prophete. But I wanted to zoom in on the last scene. It is in that detailed scene we can learn so much about the many, subtle and slow influences that drive our values, culture, and actions. Stuff that might not seem relevant at first, but when spotted can open up many new ways of connecting with people

(it is poor quality editing, but stay with me)..In the scene Malik (the dude without the beard) sits across from his best friend and ex-con Ryad. Ryad comes to visit him and brings along his son, Hicham. Now what follows is most interesting. Ryad introduces Malik to Hicham, as his godfather ( “ton parraine”)…Godfather. A christian custom whereby one person takes on the responsibility to care for another man’s child should anything occur..

Only now we see it being integrated into the life of a first generation pop culture mediated muslim man (both in the character of Ryad and in the real life of the screenwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri). Sure the Koran and Islam have their own rules for bringing up other man’s children, but the concept of being godparent as such does not excist. And yet it does in this mans world. And it seems natural. Islam now has the concept of “parraine”.

This scene serve us up with is an interesting arche/hypothesis to consider as to how this came to be:

In 1963 Joe Valachi testifies and explains the meaning of the word GodFather to the American Public

6 years later in 1969 Mario Puzo wrote a novel about the live of fictional crime family and further engrained the word in our collective imagination only for…

1972 to happen and to spawn a new genre with great cultural implications..

For one it captured the imagination of a rapper from Staten Island, called Reakwon who would in turn create his classic album Only build for Cuban Linx, which featured the first signs of his infuences not only from cinema and music but also from his actual life on Staten Island NY.

Wu Gambino’s opened the door for rappers to align themselves with cinematic and or real life criminal characters, from Irv Gotti (John Gotti), to Frank White (Notorious BIG taking on the name of the Kinf Of NY character played by Walken in the same movie) and others. (More on the development of the genre of gangsta rap here.)

Around the world in France in the meantime, the social and cultural tensions and difficulties of the Muslims and immigrants that were simmering since the difficult separation struggles in North Africa, were beginning to find ways to express themselves.

We begin seeing footballers and business people make their mark at the end of the 80’s and the early 90’s, but we also see a growing identification of French immigrant youths with their American (black/immigrant/real/fictional) street and arts counterparts and remixing it to fit in with their lives.

All of these decades of influences (of which the path I discribe is just one of many) flow seamlessly from one into the other and end up creating a scene in a movies that for the writer and the character make perfect sense (and will influence the viewers and so forth, so forth)..

Which leads me to (of course) this thing of ours..We tend to forget that a lot of what drives us as people we don’t always perceive and more often times than not has nothing to do with the category or product we want consumers to make a purchase in.

The many influences that the screenwriter Dafri (or all others mentioned) experienced in order the come up with that scene/piece of art (or to choose a particular brand of food, clothes etc) includes everything he has been exposed to since many years.

Take this into account. Yes tech trends are coming at us fast and hard, yes some have changed us profoundly, but to only look at that aspect (or any other that happens to be your field of expertise) or to just look at the category, limits our understanding of people’s lives and what they are doing and limits our ability to creat something that sets our clients apart and create value for them and consumers in a way that fits in with their lives..