It is five o'clock in the afternoon in London, and because this is England and winter, it is already dark and very cold. I'm writing in my hotel, just off Trafalgar Square. Around the corner, outside the South African embassy, there is a huge line of people waiting to sign a condolence book following the death of Nelson Mandela. These people could be Christmas shopping or getting drunk at office parties - things that the English do so well - but instead they're braving the chill to pay tribute to an icon.
Everyone has their own Mandela memories, no doubt. For me, his name conjures my first anti-Apartheid demonstration (I was there with my far more politically engaged girlfriend) and the band The Special AKA performing the song Free Nelson Mandela on Top of the Pops. Years later, I interviewed John Hunt of TBWA Hunt Lascaris, who helped to run Mandela's election campaign.
Make no mistake: Mandela was a brand, and he understood the importance of iconography. His dignity, his patterned shirts, his beaming smile - he knew exactly what effect these had on his audience. His biographer and friend Richard Stengel wrote: "In the first post-Apartheid campaign in 1994, his smile was the campaign... It told black voters that he would be their protector and white voters that he would be their champion. It was the smile of the proverb 'To understand all is to forgive all'."
