![]() ![]() When he tried to protect his newly-acquired rights by complaining to eBay about vendors using the slogan, he came up against fierce criticism for daring to flex legal muscle over a bandwagon that he was also accused of jumping on. In 2007, an ex-TV producer named Mark Coop managed to obtain an EU trademark for KCACO, and he still owns and runs a website at. Many things become successful not because they're great we attribute qualities to their success that simply aren't relevant." It has very little to do with the quality of the thing itself. "You might imagine that there's something about the poster which made it popular – and perhaps there was, initially. We mostly do what other people do." Earls puts the success of KCACO almost entirely down to spontaneous and unquestioning imitation. "We do this all the time, because we're social creatures. "It's like picking up on a gag in a conversation and doing a really bad, unfunny version," says Mark Earls, consultant and author of the books HERD and I'll Have What She's Having. ![]() I read about KCACO not long after Barter Books started selling copies I bought one and stuck it up in my hallway. Pulled out of a box decades later, however, KCACO seemed like a glorious memento of British pluck, of stiff upper lip, of a phlegmatic attitude towards wartime hardship. ![]() Research established that it was one of a series of three posters produced by the Ministry of Information during thef Second World War, and was intended as a reassuring propaganda tool to lift spirits during a time of austerity and fear.ĭespite 2.5m KCACO posters being printed, it was never displayed publicly and nearly all of them were pulped. So here's a quick précis: Stuart Manley, proprietor of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, discovered a folded poster at the bottom of a box of secondhand books back in 2001. The story of KCACO is often told, but now that examples of it are on sale in gift shops in American seaside towns, it's conceivable that some owners of KCACO objets d'art aren't aware of its history. You could say that KCACO is out of control. You could omit any, one or more of these characteristics and still produce a KCACO I've seen green ones, blue ones, ones with 'Keep Calm' replaced with 'Keep Warm', or 'Save Water', or 'Deny Self' – or, on one extraordinary poster in Peckham police station, 'Anything You Say' (May Be Taken Down And Given In Evidence). If you were asked to define the characteristics of a KCACO-style design, you'd probably say that it should have a red background with a symbol at the top, and contain the phrase 'Keep Calm' followed by 'And' on the next line and then another series of words below that – all in upper case. A Facebook group entitled 'Plague' collects some of the worst, including such horrific and meaningless examples as 'Keep Calm And Gangnam Style'. KCACO is so easily subverted that it's become the perfect meme, endlessly imitated and copied, taking on a life of its own and using humans as an unwitting propagation mechanism. You don't need me to tell you that KCACO and its many variants are everywhere it's like a painful rash breaking out across villages, towns and cities, from posters in launderettes to election leaflets, from the backs of white vans to stacks of mugs in gift shops. ![]()
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