JKR

Like kids chasing a ball around the pitch, altogether in a huddle, food brands en masse now appear to agree that pictures of fields are the best vehicle for extolling their ‘honest, natural’ credentials. This return to the rustic is often touted as a ‘mission’ and bolstered by claims of simplicity, transparency or ethics all then topped off with some rough and ready typography, because of course these brands are only a step from being cottage industries. Obviously everyone pulling the same trick creates a white noise of generic babble for consumers, with the desired out-take of ‘authenticity’ coming over as artifice (not helped by the brands which are clearly no strangers to preservatives and plastics getting in on the act). The overall impression can feel slightly patronizing and disingenuous, ‘win a tractor with Tyrrells’ takes this to its absurd limit.

Is it because the consumer responds to brands which show a nodding acquaintance with farmers’ markets? Or conversly do they feel a bit patronised by disingenuous branding? Well, McDonalds are doing it, so they obviously think it has appeal beyond middle class Islington. Odd though that all these fields just look the same – David Hockney was on TV last week with his beautiful, idiosyncratic paintings of Yorkshire (see below) demonstrating perhaps that it’s possible to be in a stylistic field of one’s own, rather than just being part of the herd.