06.05
[Originally published on The B2B Brand Debate]
Bill Marsh’s article in The New York Times a few days ago pointed out that a number of companies have recently redesigned their corporate logos, replacing “emblems of distant behemoths” with updates that are “non-threatening, reassuring, playful, even child-like.” The article includes a nice Flash click-through showing before and after logos. Marsh’s assessment is that these redesigns are aimed at addressing “the economy, environment, image repair,” and that while logos are meant to be differentiating, “there are striking similarities among recent redesigns.”
He’s right to point out the similarities, but the trend he’s seeing—which includes lowercase lettering, “softer” fonts, and lightened colors—began well before the recession. I first noticed it in 2005, while at Interbrand during the design of the new AT&T logo. Shortly after it launched, it seemed, Chevron and Allstate made very similar changes to their logos, incorporating lighter colors, rounder type, and highlights and shading that give the logos a 3D feel.
So while not all of these changes are reactions to the current economy, they do raise some awkward questions about logo design. I turned to Michael Dula, RiechesBaird’s resident logo guru, for some answers.
Should companies change their logos as a reaction to current events—changes in the economy, an increase in popular environmentalism, or even their own PR blunders?
Dula:
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05.06
I don’t always agree with the folks over at Gyro:HSR, but I just read a post by Milan Martin that makes some strong points. He takes awhile to get to it, but eventually does a nice job of making the case that B2B brands need to be built to resonate with people, not “businesses.” I’ve heard this argued time and again—I even wrote a post on it awhile back—but since many B2B companies’ marketing communications betray the fact that they (or their agencies) haven’t realized it yet, it’s still a point worth making.
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04.15
[Originally published on B2B Brand Debate. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so here.]
* While differences surely exist from agency to agency, “strategist” and “planner” will be used interchangeably throughout this post. The author’s opinion is that the responsibilities implied by these titles involve considerable overlap, but this too is open for debate.
Has anyone else noticed that strategists and account planners are getting a bad rap lately? To see what I mean, check out the show Trust Me, and you’ll see that planners are consistently portrayed as vacuous time-wasters who do little more than provide eye-roll-inducing creative briefs. For a little insight into the source of the show’s point of view, look no further than a recent blog post by Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian, entitled “I’m Tired Of Strategists,” and a second by Simon Veksner, on his blog Scamp, about “Nightmare Propositions.” These two posts popped up almost simultaneously, and underscore doubts—at least among the industry’s “creatives”—as to the importance of strategists and planners.
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03.30
[Originally published on B2B Brand Debate]
The goal of branding is sometimes explained as an attempt to create an emotional connection between brand and customer. It’s easy to demonstrate the effectiveness of this emotional side of branding with examples like Disney, Starbucks, and Harley-Davidson (brands that you may associate with happiness, indulgence, and rebellion, respectively). Brand managers working with business-to-business (B2B) brands, however, often chafe at the idea that their company or product—maybe an accounting firm or an esoteric scientific research tool—should be connecting with its customers at an emotional level.
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