If major corporate identities reflected the reality of our current economic times, you might see cars with this revised badge on the hood. Check out some others at I Can Has Happy.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler are looking for $34 billion in loans to help restructure and prevent bankruptcy. But the public has become bailout-weary having seen the cost rise to a staggering $3.45 trillion before any auto deal. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey shows 61 percent of Americans against the loans—with 53 percent believing that aid to the automakers will not help the broader economy.
The automakers argue that if they are allowed to fail it could cost millions of jobs when the country can least afford it. They also argue for their piece of the bailout by saying that consumers won't buy a vehicle from a bankrupt company. But a new survey indicates that potential car buyers wouldn't be completely unwilling to buy from a bankrupt car company if the federal government is willing to play a role in their restructuring. Merrill Lynch & Co. recently completed a study showing 90 percent of car buyers would consider purchasing a vehicle from a car company in bankruptcy court.
The ad below captures the view that despite the polls, the bailout is coming anyway.
Wal*Mart is becoming Walmart, simplifying their name and introducing a new graphic element. Certainly it's a big improvement on their old, stodgy identity—and more evidence that the retail giant is adapting to competition.
All this is good, and even expected. But what isn't expected is the striking similarity of the new Walmart logo to the existing logo for semiconductor maker LSI.
Walmart even refers to the new mark as a "spark," which is exactly the term LSI used as part of its "Spark of Innovation" rebranding after merging with Agere Systems.
Designed by branding firm Lippincott, the Walmart logo isn't a ROFLMAO moment like the OGC logo. But while the OGC logo was funny, it was original. The new Walmart logo is nice and clean...and derivative.
In a BusinessWeek article, one branding executive explains the new Walmart logo lacks the distinctive power of the most successful logos, such as Target's bull's eye, which is immediately recognizable. By comparison, Walmart's new logo "is designed so simply that there's no ownership to it," implying that it could be used by almost any corporation.
It seems to work best with the semiconductor corporation that adopted it first.
Say hello again to the twin-tailed mermaid reversed out of a brown medallion. It takes you back to 1971 and the beginning of Starbucks in Seattle.
"It's a good time to celebrate our heritage," says Starbucks spokesperson Bridget Baker. For sure, Bridget, it's good to remind people of the "good old days"—especially when Starbucks, like all of us, is weathering a sluggish economy. Unemployment is up, gas prices are high, utilities are as costly as ever, and even commodities like rice and corn have risen high enough to cause food riots around the world. When times are tough it gets harder to justify a $3.73 venti wet cappuccino.
King of the hill (of beans) As Starbucks has gobbled-up coffee competitors Seattle's Best Coffee and Diedrich Coffee it has become the undisputed king of the coffee world. Success and acceptance has moved Starbucks from a niche, luxury purveyor to a ubiquitous, near-mainstream retailer with over 15,000 Starbucks-branded stores worldwide—over 70 percent of which are in the U.S.
Now the Starbucks brand and business is under attack from down-market competitors like Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds.
One Dunkin Donuts ad really sums up the problem many people have with Starbucks. The 30-second TV spot features befuddled customers staring at the menu and trying to figure out how to order a beverage. Oh yeah, they're all singing: "My mouth can't form these words. My mind can't find these words. Is it French or is it Italian? Perhaps Fritalian."
One ad exec from Dunkin' Donuts' agency explains: "It's a thinly veiled swipe at a certain competitor." (Thinly veiled? What were they covering up?)
But Starbucks responded with a new milder blend of the Pike Place coffee and the new heritage logo on their cups. There's even a new microsite, starbuckscoffeeathome.com. It offers a virtual barista to help demystify the many Starbucks blends. "The online experience...mimic[s] the experience [consumers] would have in the store, if they went to the barista and said, 'I want to try Starbucks, but I don't know where to start,'" said Wendy Pinero, VP-global consumer products group at the coffee chain.
And, in response to the "Fritalian" attacks from Dunkin Donuts, a billboard reassuring coffee drinkers they can simply "ask for it by name."
Clients always want the logo bigger. Maybe 20 percent bigger, sometimes 50 percent bigger. I call the condition "logoitis," the irrational need to increase the size of a logo. But here's a rare case of wanting to make it smaller—much smaller.
“In the nanolithographic work we’re doing for carbon nanotube and graphene electronics experiments, we need to be able to draw and cut in very careful patterns,” said Jorg Bochterle, an Oregon State University (OSU) physics exchange student from Germany. “So we started drawing some recognizable patterns. This was actually a very useful exercise.”
The pen used to draw the images is controlled by an atomic force microscope. The researchers program the machine to apply pressure to the tip and draw lines in precise configurations, down to the size of a single molecule.
“The smallest size of modern electronics is about 100 nanometers, whereas we’re working at a scale about 10 times finer than that,” said Matt Leyden, an OSU doctoral student also involved in the studies. “Some of what we can produce might not be suitable to mass production, but it can allow creation of new prototypes and is good for research purposes.”
So, we'll award the smallest logo award to the guys at OSU—until they or someone else start painting with quarks.
From an AOL press release posted April 24th: "AOL today revealed the logo for its Platform-A advertising division. Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A, said that the new logo “effectively communicates our distinct competitive advantage of scale and reach. And its bold and simple design fits with our mission of providing advertisers and publishers with effective, impactful and easy-to-use solutions to their digital advertising needs.” Complementary brand identities for companies owned by Platform-A will be rolled out in the coming weeks."
Well, that was nice. But the logo isn't. In fact, I'm not even sure about the name. Come to think of it, maybe the whole "AOL" thing isn't working out.
As Mike Vorhaus mentions in his piece, the Time Warner 10K filing reports that "AOL believes that the 'AOL' brand is associated in the minds of consumers with its dial-up Internet access service, and AOL is seeking to build a portfolio of other brands, such as MapQuest and TMZ.com, that have a strong and more updated consumer association. If the AOL brand continues to be used to identify the AOL dial-up internet access service as well as various web products and services, such as AOL.com, AOL Money & Finance and MyAOL, this could lead to consumer confusion and exacerbate the challenges AOL faces in attracting internet consumers to and engaging them on its web products and services."
Not to rag on AOL, but the whole "training wheels for the internet" image is very much ingrained. Instead of adding a new brand to a portfolio under a tired flagship brand, perhaps a complete overhaul is needed.
Ever heard of the OGC? Well, neither have most people, and that's why the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) hired London design firm FHD to create a new visual identity for the organization. And it sounded like everything was going well, with OGC communications director Catherine Hastings saying she was "impressed with the integrated approach FHD had to offer."
So, after £14,000 and who knows how many rounds of client review, the new, clean and modern identity was unveiled to some of the 564 staffers of the OGC. It took less than a minute for some of the government workers to turn the logomark 90 degrees clockwise and, well, you can see for yourself.
Employees quickly snatched up all the ballyhooed paraphernalia before managers attempted to confiscate them. Look for them to appear on eBay any day now.
Reportedly, the OGC is going forward with the new look despite the unintended issues that popped-up. It was undoubtedly a hard decision. An OGC spokesman commented: “It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC - and it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spending.”
"Firm grip," he said? We must give the spokesman points for that one. But, going forward, is this accidentally exhibitionist identity worth the red cheeks? Or should they throw in the towel and forget the tent pole?
This might be one of top unplanned marketing results of 2008. Here's our favorite from 2007.
What novel offers a literary hero for Art Directors and Brand Managers? It’s from sci-fi author William Gibson, an unexpected writer on the subject of global marketing. Gibson, who in 1984 gave us the groundbreaking “Neuromancer”, coined now commonplace terms like “cyberspace” and “the matrix” years before either the Internet or Agent Smith.
In his latest work, "Pattern Recognition", Gibson is no longer inventing future cultures fast-forwarded by technology. Set in our present, just after 9/11, "Pattern Recognition" portrays a world with much of Gibson’s future already existing in our present. “The world,” says Gibson of his latest book, “is weird enough without needing to invent anything.”
The hero of this story is Cacye Pollard. As heroes go, she doesn’t have adamantium claws or a nifty tool belt. Her power is a pathological sensitivity to branding. "Pattern Recognition" is about Cayce’s uncanny ability to sense the architecture, the patterns, of our global brand-obsessed culture.
Her brand sensitivity is so strong that she’s physically allergic to some brands and logos. A wrong turn in a London department store sends Cacye reeling away from a Tommy Hilfiger display. She pays a local handyman to grind the trademarks off buttons on her 501’s. Her black DKNY cardigan is “un-Dikini-ed” with a pair of nail scissors. Worst of all is the appearance of Bibendum, the proper name of Michelin’s chubby tire man, whose image can cause Cacye to vomit.
She uses her brand sensitivity as a freelance "coolhunter" with an almost supernatural ability to spot trends and products before they hit the commercial big time. Cayce also consults as a logo-evaluator for multinational mega-advertising agencies. She can just look at a logo and “know” whether it will succeed or if the illustrators need to go back to the drawing board. She does it intuitively, and with flawless accuracy.
In his previous stories, Gibson created worlds with AI’s acting as puppet masters pulling invisible strings and setting change in motion. In "Pattern Recognition", it’s advertising agencies that are pulling the strings. In particular, the ad firm Blue Ant.
Blue Ant is described as “relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally distributed, more post-geographic than multinational. The agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low-drag life-form in an advertising ecology of lumbering herbivores. Or perhaps as some non-carbon-based life-form, entirely sprung from the smooth and ironic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend.”
Bigend is “a nominal Belgian who looks like Tom Cruise on a diet of virgins' blood and truffled chocolates” who “seems to have no sense at all that his name might seem ridiculous to anyone, ever.”
The plot takes off when Cacye agrees to take an unusual assignment from Blue Ant. Bigend wants Cacye to use her sensitivity to track down the creator of mysterious, brief segments of beautifully rendered film uploaded anonymously to the Web by some undiscovered 'garage Kubrick'.
The footage created a global buzz. It’s spawned an authentic subculture with 'footageheads' who gather on virtual forums to argue about its meaning and origin. Bigend sees it as a completely new, and very lucrative, way for Blue Ant to establish itself as the preeminent marketing force of the 21st Century. "I saw attention focused daily on a product that may not even exist," Bigend says. "The most brilliant marketing plot of this very young century. And new. Something entirely new."
The point of all this is that stories of futuristic technology no longer shock us because the future, in many ways, has already arrived. Gibson’s trademark cyber-genre has become passé and the truth of our popular culture is now stranger than science fiction.
When Cacye’s quest for the footage takes her to Japan, she comments on the “remarkably virtual-looking skyline, a floating jumble of electric Lego, studded with odd shapes you wouldn't see elsewhere, as if you'd need special Tokyo add-ons to build this at home.”
Like the add-ons of the Tokyo skyline, brands themselves are Legos from which our marketing-centric world is built. Read “Pattern Recognition” and revel in the future world we’re constructing right now.
