09.23
With all this talk about the (hopefully) improving economy and consumer confidence, and employment numbers as a lagging indicator…I’d be interested in seeing a national employee morale index and the relationship between morale and a nation’s GDP. Is one predictive of the other? How tight is the correlation? And of course trying to design an objective measure of national employee morale would be the really fun part. (It looks like there have been attempts, and there’s the Consumer Sentiment Index, which sounds similar but isn’t directly related to employment. Let me know if you’re familiar with something along these lines.)
Doing so might also provide evidence that brand strategy can have a significant impact on employee morale. Not because agencies can create corny “you can do it” campaigns to get employees excited about making an extra cold call or working through lunch, but because
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08.03
At last Thursday’s sit-down with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. Joseph Crowley, Mr. Obama drank a Bud Light. At first, this seems like an obvious choice—American legacy, fewer calories than Budweiser (supporting the preventative aspects of his healthcare plan), and fights his image as an arugula-eating snob. But then I remembered that Anheuser-Busch was acquired by InBev, a Belgian company (not traded on U.S. markets), around this time last year. Wouldn’t you think the president would help stimulate our economy a little by drinking a real U.S. beer? Here are some recommendations for next time. Let me know if you have other ideas…
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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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03.03
I wish I'd eaten here
One sad thing about the recession (depression?) is seeing little businesses that have gone under. I snapped this admittedly terribly photo of The Chicken House, a restaurant I passed the other day. I’ve never eaten there and I have no idea whether it was any good. A little web research shows it closed after only a few months, so maybe it wasn’t.
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