23 29 FEBRUARY 2012 | 20:13 GMT
The American Red Cross has rolled out a refinement to their logo, designed by Turner Duckworth. What they should have done is refine their brand architecture.
Making the logo look like a pin is a cute (if contrived) idea, and 3D effects are a little 2005 for us. We’ll leave more comprehensive critiques to the commenters at Brand New, but this refinement of the identity seems like a big lost opportunity to us. Continue reading this entry >>
22 25 JUNE 2011 | 20:16 GMT
Should brand owners invest in ownership of their own “.brand” domain, or is this just one last ICANN effort to monetize a no-longer-so-important monopoly?
Three years ago, rumour first began circulating about the possibility of private ownership of top level URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). On June 20 2011, ICANN, the governing body for online domain names, formally approved a decision to allow organisations to register their own names at the top level of the Internet naming hierarchy — appropriately referred to as Top Level Domains, or TLDs for short. Continue reading this entry >>
21 25 JUNE 2011 | 14:41 GMT
Truth really is stranger than fiction. Seems that some really great brands are really great liars; really excelllent at the art of deception. I just contacted Harman-Kardon, the legendary maker of higher end speakers and other stereo/surround sound equipment. I have this system I bought for my computer and one of the speakers developed a hiss that wouldn’t go away. So, like any loyal brand guy, I wrote and asked if I could buy a replacement speaker so I could keep the system intact.
24 hours later, I got a response that blew me away…totally unexpected. Here it is and I quote: Continue reading this entry >>
20 22 DECEMBER 2010 | 22:01 GMT
I’ll be speaking about the role of “truth” in branding at an AIGA event in mid-January 2011 (http://aigatruth.eventbrite.com/). The presentation will explore the role of truth (and lies) in building, sustaining, and evolving brands. I’d appreciate the thoughts of this distinguished forum and its guests on where and how veracity or deceit have profoundly changed the trajectory of brands. In your view, is truth sometimes an impediment to progress? Are lies (mild or major) useful? Which brands today are grand liars and which are beacons of truth? Who will fail or thrive because of their approach? Continue reading this entry >>
19 17 DECEMBER 2010 | 22:37 GMT
Our friends at Google Labs have just published a new tool, in which we can count the uses of words or phrases in the 15 million books they have entered, to date, in their data base. I thought it would be fun to track “corporate identity” (blue) against “corporate brand” (red). Here are the trend lines:
source: Google Labs
Continue reading this entry >>
