Arts & Culture
Golden meanings
Published 27 November 1998
Design by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
The hierarchy of metals is mystical and ancient. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia's suitors must choose one of three caskets, gold, silver or "dull lead", to win her hand. Of course, it's a test. Bassanio, conscious of a world "still deceiv'd with ornament", opens the lead casket.
Brand managers are today's Princes of Morocco. They go for gold every time. Silver comes a distant second. Most other metals are nowhere.
Gold is polyvalent. The appearance of gold in packaging is used to indicate cheap luxury. But the word is used in richer ways. In literature, it is a source of lazy simile. So, too, in consumer goods where it is used to suggest a warm wholesomeness. "Gold" and "golden" are strongly associated with foods, especially those baked, roasted or aged. The metaphor is robust enough to stretch further. You'd choose Kodak Gold to snap a sunset. UK Gold shows programmes that, er, time cannot corrode.
Real gold is put on chocolate or truffles by extravagant but not entirely confident chefs. The metal has its own E number for the purpose. What you're eating is pure signifier.
If gold is oral, surely it can't also be anal. The coprophiles who dreamed up Andrex Gold toilet paper - softer than the basic brand - beg to differ. What emerges from the body is as precious as what goes in.
Silver "with her virgin hue" has long been associated with purity. It is applied to beers and mineral waters and cosmetics, especially when targeted at younger women. Thus Revlon recently launched Charlie Silver to mark the 25th anniversary of this girlish perfume.
Silver and gold are not the only coin. Gold is now so debased that marketers have had to cast around for more precious labels. Platinum is the only metal most consumers can expect to clap eyes on that is more expensive than gold. Sadly, it looks just like silver, at least within the limitations of the foils and coatings used in packaging things.
More significant than its appearance is the complicated snobbery that attaches to this precious metal. If people realise at all that platinum is more desirable than gold, it is likely to be by reverse association, by knowing that a record goes platinum after it has gone gold or that a platinum credit card is harder to get hold of than a gold one.
Yet there are 60 other metals in the periodic table of elements. That's excluding radioactive ones whose appeal as brand names might be limited; the days of uranium denture whitener are long gone. Today, it's Colgate Platinum.
There may be room for an ironic exception to the rule. Along the lines of Radion soap powder, how about a Plutonium brand sugary drink for rapid energy? It was not long ago that the nuclear lobby in Japan ran a promotion featuring "Pluto Boy", gaily advertising that plutonium was safe enough to drink.
Which of these many metals have a future? It is not just the radioactive elements but also the heavy metals used in pigments and plating that have become tarnished in people's minds. Look at chromium: once the gloss of the affluent society, now it's the skin disorder that betrays consumerism, no longer seen even on car bumpers. Mercury Communications has been rebranded as Cable & Wireless, although admittedly the original brand owed more to mythology than metallurgy.
In tanning products, copper and bronze are on a losing streak as people wise up to the danger of skin cancer. In other circumstances, bronze only means third-rate. Copper at least has the advantage of a distinctive colour. The Duracell brand capitalises on this although the metal itself plays no part in its batteries, just as there is no silver in Ever Ready's Silver Seal rival. Batteries contain metals like cadmium and lithium, too obscure to use for branding.
Other metals are in the ascendant. At the beginning of the month, Motorola inaugurated a new satellite telephone network called Iridium. There is a Nickel brand of men's cosmetics and a retail design company called Cobalt. Look out, too, for calcium, abundant in everything from chalk to cheese and good for the bones, and titanium, the metal used to clad the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, more stainless than stainless steel. The shift seems to be away from brassy ostentation towards quiet strength. What can it all mean? I imagine the talk is of little else at the Zinc Bar.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by using the 'report this comment' facility or by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
