Filed under: Branding, Media, Random | Tags: jon stewart, microsoft, morning joe, msnbc, snl, starbucks
I’m not really an ad man, but I do follow the industry trends a bit. I guess that makes me a wannabe ad man. In fact, I think the honest truth is that most people in branding are wannabe ad men (and women, to be politically correct).
These days, for all our advancement toward the bright future where advertising has died and been replaced by digital brand experiences, there’s a whole lotta retro going on. One trend I’ve noticed recently is a return to the good old days of solo program sponsorship, where a single brand carries the show. Like the Ed Sullivan Show brought to you by Brylcream – a little dab’ll do ya.
Some examples from the past few months:
Morning Joe – Starbucks’ uneasy marriage with MSNBC. Jon Stewart, in typical fashion, cast the sponsorship deal under a rather harsh and sniggery light.
Bud Light Golden Wheat (which probably needs all the marketing push it can get) bought up a single edition of SNL for its brand launch.
And then there was the ill-fated Microsoft-sponsored Seth McFarlane variety special. Microsoft pulled out when they learned the content was less than savory. Which makes it seem like the marketing folks who approved the deal had never watched a single episode of Family Guy.
Ah, it was so much easier in the old days…
For a while now, for years, I think, I had been wondering when brandchannel, Interbrand’s branding news site would get with the times. Their time to press, article selection and overall design and layout never seemed quite worthy of a global branding leader. And it certainly didn’t seem to gel with the contemporary blogosphere landscape.
Fortunately, a couple months ago brandchannel upped their game with a fresh look and daily content updates. At first, it didn’t seem like they had the content to populate the site on a daily basis, and some of the writing was a bit patchy, but recently they seem to have hit their stride. Still, I wonder if this is the right strategy for the site. The weekly content was more in-depth, and tended to spark more dialog in the peanut gallery. Has brandchannel become just another marketing blog?
One point of relief: my old brandchannel articles are still tucked safely away in the archives.
Wanted to make a quick comment on a rebranding effort I noticed by way of my inbox this week. I maintain a meager and modest web presence – which is in dire need of its own rebranding, I have to say, and have used Network Solutions as my host for a couple years now. Never thought much about their brand – probably not a very good sign – but I somehow had the impression that their services were more stable and userfriendly than the last web hosting service I used.
Well, it’s safe to say they’ve gone full-blown branded. Not sure that their new visual identity really says all that much, but they are definitely dialing up the customer-centric approach that is so hip and trendy these days (that I touched on in my presentation last week).
Sometimes we all need a sip of our own koolaid.
Last weekend I was out bobbing on the waves with a friend who works in construction. He’s spent the past year putting the finishing touches on the Trump International Hotel in Waikiki. As is common with many Waikiki “hotels”, some of the units have been sold to private individuals, condo-style. According to the authorities, all available units were sold out by the early afternoon of the day they hit the market.
But now, some of these future owners are up in arms and filing lawsuits over the possibility that they may not be getting full value for their investment. Are they complaining about the quality of the units, or the building materials? No, they are pissed because the developer may not get final clearance to use the Trump name on the building.
I mentioned this story to my construction worker surf pal, and he said he understood how they felt. It would be like buying a Mercedes Benz without the logo. So there you go. Brand is by no means rational. But it certainly is real – especially when it’s convinced you to drop 1.5 million on a condo.
Filed under: Branding, Events, Hawaii, Honolulu, Work | Tags: Branding, pecha kucha, presentation, tightness
I have to say I was pretty happy with how my presentation at PKN Honolulu went down last night. OK, it’s not like I singlehandedly created 200 converts to the church of brand, but I was pleased that I gave exactly the presentation I wanted to – simple, coherent flow, good energy, with visuals that cohered with super-tightness to my narrative. Yeah!
Filed under: Branding, Hawaii, Random | Tags: gas company, milquetoasty, tagline
Due to persistent issues with our ancient water heater (a whole nother saga), I have paid several recent visits to Hawaii’s Gas Company’s website. A large part of my profession is paying attention to corporate identity, especially its verbal expression, and , consummate professional that I am, I just can’t turn it off after hours. As I scoured the site for the phone number I wanted (which, incidentally, I couldn’t find – I had to be redirected), their tagline really started to annoy me. While not an absolute abomination, its milquetoasty construction smacks of decision-by-committee gone lazily wrong. For starters, it’s just too long. You don’t need so many words to convey “customer service”. The first phrase sets the tepid tone, essentially claiming “We intend to satisfy customers.” Clearly they don’t feel confident enough to make the claim “We deliver satisfaction”. Then comes the punchline, “And we want yours”. They might as well have said, “Hopefully, if we don’t screw it up, we will make you satisfied”. Furthermore, the construction somehow makes it seem like your satisfaction is more important to them than it is to you – their achievement rather than your benefit.
Had it been up to me, I would have crafted something much more pithy and succinct. Something along the lines of “Got Gas?”
Filed under: Branding, Hawaii, Media, Random | Tags: go!, hln, ignominious, naming
As someone who entered branding via the ignominious trade of verbal identity, I sometimes, rather pathetically, still find myself hovering hungrily over news of a verbal rebranding like a collector of rare manuscripts. I came across a couple this week:
This week a federal judge helped thwart go! Airlines’ attempt to rebrand as Aloha, dismissing their purchase of the name and logo as illegally conducted. Aloha was the local airline they put out of business almost a year ago through aggressive pricing tactics. It’s really odd to me that they’d want to reskin using the dead remnants of their old competitor. Yes, there is a lot of equity in Aloha, but here in Hawaii, folks would scream for blood if the deal went down. Aloha was part of the community, and a big job provider. You might fool the tourists, but the locals would be pulling the screws out of your wings.
I was a little slow on the uptake on this one, but to be honest I just don’t watch that much tv anymore. I happened to flip on Headline News – I mean, HLN – and the first thing I noticed, aside from how much further it continues to slide down the infotainment tube (npi), with CB-Rihana dominating the cycle, was the logo change. All this happened late last year, from what I gather, but they are still reminding viewers, just as the newsreader had to remind us that arraignment means “formally charged”. I guess all this is geared at the text generation, and what with the E!ish content leanings, it does seems very craftily crafted for their target demographic. At risk of sounding fogeyish, I was turned off (npi). Win some, lose some, I guess.
Filed under: Branding, Random | Tags: drab, logo, packaging, pepsi, tropicana
There has been a whole lot of web noise about the recent redesigns of two iconic brands: Pepsi and Tropicana (at least within the realm of the people who give a rat’s ass about such things). What is notable to me is that they seem to be extreme examples of a trend in design toward the utilitarian and the generic. Part of it is based in the cult of simplicity – or ipodification – that, when done well, can generate astonishing results, but more often than not tends toward the drab. It makes me wonder: is this drabness a reflection of the times we are living through? Does it speak to the current economic, material and spiritual trough we are mired in? Certainly the times can impact logo design, and not just the whims of changing taste. A more basic logo can be less expensive to commission and produce. It may attract more buyers who are looking for a reasonable purchase by virtue of its humble appearance. But I can’t help thinking that at a more symbolic level, these logo designs are revealing something about our collective spirit. Maybe that we’ve lost a bit of pluck and verve, playfulness, energy. Or, more hopefully, maybe it represents a return of honesty, of tact and subtlety.
At any rate, I’d still rather drink Coke.
I was recently reading an interview with Steve Reich in an essay anthology called Sound Unbound, and in it he talks at some point about the sin of Adam in eating the forbidden fruit. He mentions an interesting angle on the primal sin myth, which comes from the Zohar, the central book of Jewish mysticism. According to the Zohar (not to be confused with the Zohan), the original sin was really one of timing. If Adam and Eve had been able to wait until the Sabbath, enjoyment of the fruit would have been permitted. But Adam couldn’t control himself and had to take a bite a couple hours before the start of the holy day. Reich mentions this version in relation to the steady march of technological advancement, over which us humans don’t really seem to exercise much control. That is to say, we couldn’t just collectively decide to take a few years off from developing faster and faster processing chips.
Now, when I read this, I suddenly realized, as an inadvertent brand guy, that this must be the idea at the core of Apple’s brand name and logo! (Whether Apple’s marketing team knows it or not.) Now, I’ve read a few lazy descriptions of the Apple naming process that claim “Apple” was essentially developed a “fun” alternative to what was on the market at the time. Which may be true. But I prefer the idea of Apple products as the forbidden fruit, that tempting morsel that Adam just couldn’t keep himself from sampling before the designated time, knowing full well he was about to damn mankind for all eternity. After all, someone’s taken a bite out of the apple in the logo.
