Posts Tagged logos
does not rhyme with orange
Posted by Chris Houchens in branding on February 26, 2009
Back in with the old and out with the new for Tropicana?
The whole Tropicana fiasco fascinates me. While the new image looks very modern (and generic), it turns out people don’t want trendy OJ packaging. They want to be able to quickly pick up their favorite orange juice at the grocery.
My big question is: what was broken about the “straw in the orange” look that needed fixing anyway? The straw/orange is a nearly perfect metaphor for OJ.
It never ceases to amaze me how companies trash years of brand equity and customer familiarity just because they’re tired of the way the living room furniture looks and want to remodel.
Maybe it’s because Pepsi (who owns Tropicana) got seduced by the siren song of creatives who are more concerned with image than reality. Just a few weeks ago Arnell Group CEO Peter Arnell was singing his own praises about “the work” that is now being scrapped. Of course, these are the same people who basically just did a redux of the Obama logo and then sold it to Pepsi packaged with this garbage.
Most everybody is laying the flop at the feet of the brand team. But let’s not foget the other glaring failure of this Tropicana incident: the research. This move was run by the focus groups and had extensive market research. But then again, so was New Coke.
no such thing as bad press?
Posted by Chris Houchens in branding, media on January 15, 2009
Marketing Tip — Always put your logo on the buoyant end of the plane.
btw– Supposedly this was the first pic of the event taken from an iPhone and immediately uploaded to Twitter using Twitpic. The MSM then interviewed the citizen journalist nearly a half hour after he broke the story.
Other reports say that Sean Connery was standing near the crash mumbling something about Charlemagne and armies of rocks and trees and the birds in the sky.
sam’s new hat
Posted by Chris Houchens in branding on July 28, 2008
Have a bad name from destroying downtown businesses, treating your employees badly, and dominating the American capitalist system? Maybe a new logo will fix everything.
more olympic hijinks
Posted by Chris Houchens in marketing on November 28, 2007
God Save the Queen.
hey taxi!
Posted by Chris Houchens in marketing on October 19, 2007
Sometimes the product IS the logo. If you’re lucky enough to be caught in that position, don’t mess with it. But bureaucracy is not that smart.
In what is a sure fire example of the crap that can be produced by committee, New York has unveiled a logo for New York taxis.
Never mind that the logo is not needed. They went the extra step to make it hideous.
How can you use three typefaces in only seven characters?
Am I in Boston? Why is the Boston T symbol showing up in the middle?
And as one commenter on a New York Times blog wrote — “it looks like someone used a dime-store stencil.”
The sad part about the whole logo is that it probably started as a good one since the original ideas came from Smart Design, the same group that puts together the smooth designs of Oxo proucts. But, as Tim Manners posted on Reveries, — “Rather than settling on one idea, the committee decided to go with all of them.”
Several more problems are outlined in this New York Times blog post along with commentary and alternative designs from some smart designers.
No Go Logo
Posted by Chris Houchens in branding, marketing on June 6, 2007
There’s been quite a bit of online conversation and critique about the 2012 Olympic logo.
Great comments from Hugh who was actually there when it was unveiled.
And Seth had some great advice for people who speak jargon-ese to detract from the fact that they just ripped you off. And he really hit the nail on the head with a post about logos in general.
Here’s the thing — Advertising and graphic design are subjective. I personally don’t like this logo. Maybe you do. And criticism like this is going to happen all day in these fields.
But what does need to be considered is the big picture. So maybe you don’t like the color or the font, but will it help gain market share?
I had a client a few years ago who hired me to develop a marketing plan for his company. I discovered that while he was balking at my plans and my fees, he had paid a branding company an outlandish fee to come up with a logo and name for the company. And this happens all the time. Too many times, business strains at the gnat and swallows the camel when it comes to marketing. Spend your marketing dollars on the tires and engine of marketing — not on the upholstery and the radio.
It’s true that you need a good logo. And you don’t need to go the cheap route with it or try to do it yourself with clipart and MS Word. But you also don’t need to shell out $800,000 for anything that could easily be emailed to you.
The truest test is that if your graphic identity is giving people epileptic seizures as the 2012 Olympic one apparently is, perhaps it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
BONUS::It seems the British people could have done a better job. If you take out the photo-based ones, 2012 logos done by BBC News readers here and here are pretty good. (of course, that’s my subjective opinion)
Same Bat Time : Same Bat ?
Posted by Chris Houchens in advertising on August 16, 2006
Quick.
What’s wrong with this billboard?
(Other than the fact that they make a weird couple.)
You’d think a TV station would know something about advertising. But, you’d be wrong.
Forgetting one detail makes the entire thing useless.
Maybe the dog knows what channel it’s on.
tags:: billboards – advertising – marketing – wegotweather! – TV – bowling green
The Name Game
Posted by Chris Houchens in branding on April 24, 2006
Naming a business is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. It’s second only to naming a child (Pass the salt, Veleena.)
Nine years ago, I gave my marketing practice the name, Shotgun Concepts. Sometimes people ask me what that means. (“Well, Shotgun is Norse for “Sage Marketing Wizard” and Concepts means… “)
Actually, I was dating a girl at the time and my nickname for her was “Shotgun”. Luckily, today that girl is my wife and the mother of my children. Don’t name a business after a girlfriend. You might not be so lucky.
Shotgun also fit because I have a very broad “big picture” outlook on marketing….just like a broad shotgun blast.
I’ve never liked the fact I stuck the word “Concepts” in there. I was younger and more stupid nine years ago and hadn’t fully appreciated how that word would fade into “business speak”. It could have been “The Shotgun Group” or the painfully obvious “Shotgun Marketing”. But now, “concepts” is engrained in URLs, letterhead, legal paperwork, and people’s minds. It’s too late to change.
So I was glad to see this post on Adrants today. There’s a blog movement to get the word “concept” as it’s used in the marketing/ad world (as a verb) added to the dictionary.
–to concept (knspt) – v. 1. A process whereby ideas are generated for the purpose of creatively solving a problem.
Fits perfectly.
tags:: business names – concept – brand – branding – Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls
Dead Presidents
Posted by Chris Houchens in branding, strategy on October 6, 2005
I’m a big fan of an unified graphic look for an organization.
Business cards, letterhead, websites, ads, etc should use the same fonts, colors, and “feel”. Success is achieved when someone can look at a piece and know it came from you even without looking at the name/logo. Even though brand does not equal logo, the essence of the brand is carried through your logo and graphic look.
In a very large organization, when the graphic look changes, it take a little time to integrate it throughout the company. And there’s no larger organization that the US Government.
I don’t like the current redesign trend of US currency.
With the state quarter program, the Sacagawea dollar, the Lewis & Clark nickels, and now a permanent new nickel, it seems the Mint has gone gimmick happy. With all these gimmicks, coinage is losing its unified graphic look.
Paper currency redesign has been better. Most of the redesign in recent years has been driven by the need to thwart counterfeiters rather than gimmicks. And as I said, with such a large organization, the Government is doing it slowly with one denomination at a time.
But what about the one dollar bill?
While the 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 are on the second round of redesigns, dour George is still the same. Why has it not been redesigned with a large portrait/colors/etc to “match” the other currency?
Obviously, criminals who counterfeit dollar bills are doing just for the pleasure of the work since there not a lot of payoff. I’m sure that’s the reason the Treasury isn’t hot to redesign.
In addition….although I’m sure the government isn’t thinking in branding terms… in terms of graphic image, this traditional one dollar bill is used all over the world as the graphical representation of the entire US economy. Changing it would be like McDonalds dumping the golden arches.
BUT the change has begun…and needs to be finished. It’s where marketing policy and fiscal policy meet.
tags:: marketing graphic arts logo branding rants
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