Apologies for the delay in posting; I am embedded in the British Library, knocking out a chapter per month up to Christmas, when the book is due. I'll be re-starting this site in the new year, turning it into a proper resource on matters branded.

I sit each day in the area of the library known to staff as 'laptop alley'; a long hallway lined with sofas and 'workstations' crammed with people and their laptops. A good few people come on a regular basis and sit in the same seat each day. Too British to say hello, I have no idea what their names are or what they do. But I do know which brand of laptop they have, and I have begun to know them by these labels (The Sony Vaio guy who thinks he's way-cool, the studious looking girl with the MacBook)

I recently had a psychometric test done on me, a series of psychological interviews and hypnosis sessions which determine the type of consumer that I am. During the tests, it was explained to me that people who buy PC's such as IBM or Dell do so because they are practical people… you buy an IBM for what's inside the box (Pentium processors etc etc). In contrast, people who buy Macs are 'big picture' consumers, people who have creative imaginations who buy for meaning as opposed to practicalities. I wonder if these assumptions would bear out if I interviewed the regulars on laptop alley?

Months ago, I noted on this blog a conversation I had with a brand manager at Adidas; he believed in treating people according to the stereotypes of their brands, that this system of values saves us time in selecting friends and partners. According to this law, there would be no point in making friends with the attractive Asian women who sits beside me each day, because she has a clunky old Hewlett Packard. Nor the friendly looking middle-aged guy who sits opposite me with his Toshiba.

I have no idea what these people think about me… my de-branded laptop, together with my brand-free clothes/ bag/ water bottle/ packed lunch say little or nothing about the person I might be… except maybe that I am too poor to buy the good things in life. They are most likely getting on with their work and not staring at those around them… something I should learn to do if I'm to get this damn book finished.

Before I took a match to all my gear, I had planned to live without a mobile phone for the duration of the experiment. On reflection, I think that was a tall order. The combined withdrawal from the TV, the shops and, oh pretty much every aspect of modern urban life was, according to my therapist, turning me into a paranoid wreck. Without the phone, I was feeling completely disconnected from the world, regardless if people were trying to contact me or not; it was the being contactable part that I really missed.



So in a bid to reclaim my sanity, I finally connected with The Phone Co-operative, who are a small, ethically run mobile phone service provider outside Oxford. I have to admit that when I first contacted them, I was put off by the apparently small scale of the business, compared to the warehouse-sized call centres of Orange or o2. On my first enquiry to the company, the line was engaged. On the second attempt I got an answer phone. I began to wonder if the Phone Co-Op's network was built with string and tin cans.



However my confidence was fully restored when I did finally engage with an employee. Helpful, knowledgeable, courteous and professional are not words I would normally use to describe the drones on the end of the phone at Orange, but these folks were; almost to their discredit (what kind of company treats their customers with respect these days?).



Within five days I had a new number, a new sim card and a recycled, de-branded, unlocked handset, which cost me £20 from recyclemymobile.com (complete with the previous owner's address book, a Mr Rizwan from Bolton, as far as I can make out). Yes it is a Nokia. Believe me, I searched all corners of the earth for a generic non-branded phone, but to the best of my knowledge, there is none. To compensate, I chose the cheapest, nastiest, most basic phone on the website; as a status symbol, this phone says I have the aspirations of a nomadic goat farmer. An object of pure utility, this is not something that draws admiring comments when left on the table of a pub, and when I walk past gangs of young hooded phone robbers on the street, they pay me no attention whatsoever.

If you have a mobile (who doesn't) and are fed up with impersonal service, endless call queues and stupid marketing gimmicks (Orange's call packages are now called squirrel and elk, I believe) then wriggle out of your contract and speak to the Phone Co-Operative. I'd keep your polyphonic colour screen walkman camera phone though, as this stone age brick ain't much fun.