randform

I will be soon in London for about ten days. Any comments on interesting things to see there are welcome! Blogging may be delayed/postponed.

Berlin this morning in a wireless spot.

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sport fans of sport club Vëllaznimi, Gjakovë, Kosova

When discussing videogames in this old randform post, I was also mentioning examples where “virtual identities” where mingled with real war. It would be exagerated to see this already as a trend. Nevertheless I recently found a similar example of this mingling – however this time in marketing strategies, namely in the new marketing campaign “James Blunt returns to Kosovo”.

A lot of people think the NATO troops in 1999 brought peace into Kosovo and may be they did, however it is not clear yet how the conflict will end. But regardless of what the result may be – the main message of that conflict was sofar more or less: there seems to be no other solution than to fight violence with violence. The same old story. In a civilized “post war Europe”.

Where in fact – not only Kosovo – but the entire war in former Yugoslavia was a slap into the face of civilization. Sarajevo – city of culture and mulitethnicity – wiped out like nothing. Accumulated traumatas are again going to be distributed over generations. But back to the campaign.

James Blunt – whose marketing adepts were already quite extensively playing out his double identity of being a former soldier in Kosovo and likewise a heartful popsinger returns now to Kosovo according to this campaign.

Is this in order to make him more attractive following an old evolutionary paradigma that a warrior is guaranteeing a better fitness? Is this for giving more authenticity to his virtual identity? Make him more real?

As I already said may be the Kosovo mission was sucessful, despite the violence of the mission. This is one thing. It is something else which is leaving me with a stale flavour after watching the above video teaser, namely the citation of James Blunt (at least thats what I hear towards the end of the video, blame me if its wrong):

“….in Kosovo the issues were real….”

.

or was this just a Blunt-vs.-Bond joke by Blunt – sotosay a my-own-private-Kosovo, what I was hearing? a sudden ironic self-reflecting outbreak?

two ironic James Blunt cover versions:
->my cubicle and
->bloody cold.

(James Blunts original song)

The interested randform reader knows that we are always on the look for fancy
input devices.

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Check this out.

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