Stinky Cheese: The $50 Logo Experiment

I read about the $50 Logo Experiment this morning on the Logo Design Love blog and just had to share it with you!

As many of you may know, there are a lot of online logo design companies out there who promise to basically move mountains for mere pennies, giving you custom logo designs at bargain basement prices with un-heard-of turnaround times. It's kind of scary at times for designers like me, because why would you want to work with my company when you could go to one of them for much less?

Well this post is a perfect example of why it would behoove you to run screaming from these logo companies. I always wondered what kind of work these companies produced, and this blogger's experience gave me quite a laugh. That cheese character is just priceless!

The morals of the story?

1. Make sure your designer gets to know you first. There are a lot of logo designers out there. Whether you choose to work with my company or not, make sure the designer you choose is concerned about getting to know your business before they dive head-first into Illustrator. At Perceptivity Studio, we go through our Perception Brief with our clients before starting a logo design, which helps us get to know what makes your business tick, what you like, what you don't like and so on. We've found that it's much easier to get things right the first time around when there's a rationale to go on.

2. Don't nickel and dime your designer. Logo design is a very time-consuming process if you're doing it right. When I design logos for my clients, choosing a typeface alone can take hours as I sort through thousands of fonts in my collection to find several options that will work for a logo, not to mention creating several graphic images that will represent the company (and what they represent) well. Assuming that sweat-shop labor is still illegal, give your designer the budget they need to properly allocate the amount of time it takes to give you some great logo options to choose from.

3. You get what you pay for. If you do decide to go with one of the online logo design companies, you very well might end up with a logo you love. But you're more likely to end up with some stinky cheese.

A company's logo is such an important part of its identity, and I absolutely love working with companies to design or even re-design their logos. Thank you to all of the companies who've trusted Perceptivity Studio to establish their brands. I hope the process was worth more than $50! :)

A bit of advertising history: famous logos and Super Bowl Commercials

Things have gotten very busy again at Perceptivity Studio. Not that I'm complaining in the least, but it's made my blogging become a bit scarce! I really do plan to get some of the fun new projects we've been working on up here soon, but in the meantime, here are a few websites where you can go kill some time learning about the history of advertising.

1. Stories Behind 10 Famous Food Logos
Sure you recognize them in the grocery store, but do you know how these famous icons came to be? Get to know more about the Morton Salt Girl, Jolly Green Giant, Sara Lee, Quaker Oats and the Laughing Cow, find out where Heinz 57 came from, and find out which two of these four icons are real people and which two were dreamed up by creative advertising geniuses: the Gerber baby, Aunt Jemima, Chef Boyardee and Betty Crocker. I love seeing how brands have evolved over the years but still maintained a sense of brand equity so you and I will still recognize them.

2. The Adland Archive of Super Bowl Commercials
While most years I honestly couldn't care less about the football teams playing in the Super Bowl, I most certainly do care about the famous Super Bowl commercials! Super Bowl commercials are notoriously the best commercials you'll see all year, and companies spend humongous amounts of money to make sure their spots will be the ones talked about. (This year the starting cost for a :30 Super Bowl commercial is reportedly up to $3 million dollars, not to mention the production costs to put together that :30 spot. What would you do with that kind of marketing budget?)

Anyway, here is an archive of all of the notable Super Bowl commercials from years past. My all time favorite Super Bowl commercial? The Apple 1984 commercial from, not surprisingly, the year 1984. It's a classic and gives me chills every time I see it. Not to mention it launched Mac computers! Here's a bit of history on the Apple 1984 commercial:

The Apple 1984 commercial was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, and Ridley Scott (who had recently finished filming Blade Runner) was hired to direct it with the "unheard-of production budget of $900,000." Steve Jobs loved the spot, so they purchased commercial spots in the upcoming Super Bowl. In December 1983 they screened the 1984 commercial for the Apple Board of Directors, and reportedly the entire board hated it. It almost got pulled in favor of a much safer but much less impactful spot, but thankfully it did run and the rest is history. To read more about it, there's a great article here.

The Apple 1984 commercial is embedded below, enjoy!

Guerrilla Marketing for Obama: Vending Machine "Change"

It's been a long election season, so needless to say I'm excited to go cast my vote on Tuesday! Which leads me to a very important reminder: GO VOTE ON TUESDAY! We've seen in the past few elections that every vote really, truly counts, so please, regardless of who you're planning to vote for, just get out to the polls on November 4th. It's important, and we are so lucky to have the opportunity to choose our next leader during this difficult time in our nation's existence.

OK, off my soapbox and on to the fun stuff. While I won't get into the politics of either candidate, I will say that from a marketing perspective, Obama's campaign has been a breath of fresh air. Whether you love him or hate him, you must admit that Obama's marketing campaign has been brilliant.

Obama's logo and campaign materials, unlike so many political campaigns before them (and after them, I'm sure) are well designed, not only from a visual standpoint, but also from a branding standpoint. They're patriotic, but also clean and simple, touting "Change" and "Hope" more than the candidate's name, and making these words almost synonymous with "Obama."

To quote a great blog post from earlier this year,

...we are living through the first Presidential campaign that is being marketed like a high-end consumer brand...The typical Presidential campaign logo usually features some variant of the stars and stripes. Beyond patriotism, they have no message. They are pretty much interchangeable between Republicans and Democrats. Obama’s logo rearranges these patriotic elements into an emblem that distills his message to the core: the hope of the sun rising [or, Republicans, is it setting?] over amber waves of grain, with the novelty of the candidate’s unusual last name reinforced in an “O”...And like good corporate logos, this logomark can be disaggregated from the candidate’s name, in the same way that the swoosh instantly screams “Nike” or the circular logos of BMW and Mercedes spark instant associations with affluence and prestige.

There was the viral Yes We Can video:
Yes We Can Obama Song by Will.I.Am


Then there was that 30 minute "infomercial" this week across most major networks with absolutely no mention of his opponent. Not to mention a brilliant Internet campaign including Twitter, Facebook, and an email announcement to subscribers the moment Obama chose his vice presidential candidate. I could go on...

But the item that inspired me enough to actually blog about his campaign was the brilliant guerrilla marketing campaign I read about on Trend Hunter this morning, called "Press for Change." The Press for Change campaign encourages Obama supporters to transform the change buttons on vending machines into a political message for Obama, adding his "O" logo to the button with a "press for change" sticker above it. Genius! Here are some pictures:

































Now I'm not condoning vandalism here, nor am I suggesting that seeing the Obama message on a vending machine is going to sway a vote one way or the other, but again, regardless of politics, you must admit that this one is clever, and totally in-line with Obama's brand promise.

I hope that future politicians are taking (marketing) notes from Obama's campaign, and I look forward to seeing how future elections take Obama's strategies one step further as our marketing landscape continues to evolve.

Don't forget to vote on Tuesday. Promise?

A More Sophisticated Yellow Tag: Best Buy Gets a New Logo

I just read on the Brand New blog this morning that Best Buy is in the process of re-branding themselves with a new, more sophisticated logo. There's quite a bit of debate over at Brand New about whether Best Buy's new logo was a good idea or not, and I'm still a bit undecided myself.

As I said in my comment over there, my initial reaction was positive. From an aesthetic standpoint, the new Best Buy logo is certainly an improvement...from a practical standpoint I'm still making up my mind.

It's certainly hard to ignore the screaming yellow price tags currently adorning all of Best Buy's stores, but will we really not notice the new yellow-outlined tag just because it's not screaming as loud? The big-box Best Buy stores will still probably be painted bright blue, and the yellow is still there, just not "highlighter" yellow. I'm guessing the new Best Buy signs will all be in neon, a la the photos from the new Mall of America storefront where the new logo was launched.

It's still going to be obvious that this is Best Buy, and I don't think people will notice them less because of their new logo.

In our Great Logo quiz back in May, Best Buy was one of the logos we looked at. Here's what I had to say back then:

This logo has been around since 1989, and literally screams the company's main benefit (you will get the "best buy" by shopping here) loud and clear in eye-catching yellow and black. In Best Buy's highly competitive retail environment, this bold color combination may be a good idea. However, just because it's bold doesn't mean people will automatically pay attention, so think about colors that make sense for your company before automatically picking the loudest ones.

I said it then and I say it now. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to stop screaming at your customers. Let's see how Best Buy's new logo plays out once it's officially launched.

What is a brand?

The word "brand" gets thrown around a lot these days. (I know I use it all the time.) But what is a brand?

A brand in a marketing sense is essentially everything that has to do with a company or product. It's not only the visual logo and identity as the term is often used, but it's also how people feel about a product, and all of their experiences with that product, both positive and negative. Companies try to influence brand perception with advertising and marketing...I should know, it's my job...but a brand isn't something physical you can hold in your hand. It's an intangible, ephemeral concept that can determine the success or failure of a company. To put it simply, it's quite a powerful little word influenced by more factors than you can count on your fingers and toes.

I read today in the Brand New blog that the Department of Psychology at Harvard University is currently running a "mind study" that examines how people perceive the 'mental' capacities of corporations. Here's how Harvard explains it:

Every day we buy products from a variety of corporations. Each of them employs marketers to see into your mind - the mind of their consumer. Here is your opportunity to turn the tables and evaluate their minds. Of course, corporations do not have minds in the normal sense, but they do possess certain abilities. We are interested in how people perceive the mental capacities of corporations.

It's essentially an exercise to see how you perceive the brands of the 13 companies they're testing. First you meet the companies, ranging from companies most people like (Google, Whole Foods) to companies most people are ambivalent about (Playtex, TWA) to companies most people despise (Phillip Morris, Enron). Next you're given a series of tests to take — the first one I took was "Harm" and others include Worth, Punishment, Morality, Guilt and Desire — that take between 5 and 10 minutes to complete. You're given a series of match-ups of two of the companies on the list...so in my first quiz, I was asked, "If you were forced to harm one of these corporations, which one would it be more painful for you to harm?" Based on my results, here is how I ranked the 13 companies they were testing.

1. Google
2. =Disney
3. =Apple
4. Toys 'R' Us
5. =Ben and Jerry's
6. Starbucks
7. Whole Foods Market
8. Playtex
9. Walmart
10. Trans World Airlines
11. Enron
12. Exxon
13. Phillip Morris

Google, Disney and Apple are tied for first because I love them all and couldn't inflict any pain upon any of them, then Toys R Us because it's a happy place, then Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's are tied for 3rd because they're both guilty pleasures. Next comes Whole Foods, which I don't actually patronize, but I think well of, then Playtex, which I don't really feel one way or the other toward, followed by Walmart, which I'm not a big fan of to say the least, then TWA, which doesn't exist anymore so I didn't feel so bad inflicting pain on it, followed by my three least favorite companies on the list, Enron, Exxon and Phillip Morris. I obviously feel stronger about high gas prices and smoking than I do about corporate scandal.

My results didn't surprise me much...given the list of companies, I probably would have ranked them similarly, with just a few changes in the middle perhaps. But it's interesting to see how emotions can be tied to our feelings about a company's brand, especially in the circumstances Harvard is asking us to put them in.

How do you rank the companies? Take the quiz and find out if your perceptions are in line with your actions. And see why even though a company might spend billions on marketing, or "branding" themselves, there are so many other factors that influence consumers' perception.

Ruby Tuesday Demolition: A "Cheeky" Viral Marketing Stunt

I was intrigued when I saw the following Ruby Tuesday commercial on TV on Monday night, and made a mental note to myself to go check out their website at 3pm on Tuesday.



I should learn not to depend on mental notes, because I just now remembered (on Wednesday!) that I was supposed to go watch the live Ruby Tuesday demolition. I went to the Ruby Tuesday website to see if they'd posted the demolition there for those of us with memory problems, but it appears that this was a viral marketing stunt by Ruby Tuesday, and a disappointing one at that.

The premise was that the newly re-branded Ruby Tuesday, which recently adopted a new logo







and more upscale interior design for their restaurants (which is a big improvement, if you haven't been there lately...still not a huge fan of the food though!), was going to demolish their last "old" store live on the internet to symbolize how different they had now become from other casual dining restaurants. Here's a video of the result:



Apparently, the demolition crew "accidentally" blew up Cheeky's Bar & Grill next door instead due to its "sameness," but now, because of the "sweeping changes that have taken place within (the Ruby Tuesday) organization, it's extremely unlikely that a Ruby Tuesday restaurant will ever be confused for another casual dining establishment again." Hardy har har.

They have an apology letter up to Cheeky's Bar and Grill on the Ruby Tuesday website, but of course the whole stunt was just a gimmick. I appreciated the symbolic nature of what Ruby Tuesday was trying to do when I saw the commercial on Monday, but I'm very disappointed with the result, as are others and others to say the least.

Had they actually demolished their last restaurant instead of the fake Cheeky's Bar & Grill (for which they even created a website), I would have had a lot more respect for the marketing stunt, because it really did seem like an interesting idea. I was definitely intrigued after seeing that initial commercial for the Ruby Tuesday demolition, but now I'm just disappointed. To quote the Serious Eats blog, "Ruby Tuesday arguably botched what could have been a complicated, humorous campaign, and this whole debacle shows how talented and clever you need to be to successfully pull off viral marketing stunts." Amen.

Viral Marketing: Popcorn Cell Phones

Did you know that cell phones can make kernels of popcorn pop? Just think what they must be doing to your brain! Mass pandemonium ensues!



Wrong! It turns out the video was a marketing ploy by Cardo Systems, makers of a Bluetooth headset. It was officially debunked by physicists here, and Snopes here but everyone doesn't do the research before believing their email forwards. Hence the video has gone "viral," with millions of people spreading it around.

Viral marketing is defined as a marketing strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.

Marketers have been using the viral marketing medium quite successfully. Some famous viral marketing examples that you may have participated in yourself include Burger King's Subservient Chicken which allowed users to control a creepy chicken character to promote their BK Tendercrisp sandwich that you can get "just the way you like it" just like you can get the subservient chicken to do anything you want it to do.

Another of my favorite viral marketing examples is the Dove Evolution campaign, which has won multiple awards, and goes beyond the "silly" factor to present a very valid and important message to women around the world. I received it quite a few times in email forwards myself, did you?



Goofy, meaningful or just plain weird, viral marketing is certainly a new medium that many big companies are using quite successfully.

A new logo for Walmart

Wall Street Journal released a story today that Walmart is changing its logo. While it's not official yet, new signage designs were submitted for a new store prototype, and show white letters on a burnt-orange background followed by a white starburst.

The new design is evocative of Target's clean, simple logo, and evidences Walmart's attempts to modernize its image to better compete with Tar-jhay. Reports show that the new logo should officially be revealed sometime this week.

I think it's about time they spruced up their image a bit. Sometimes it's tempting to keep a logo just because it's been around forever, but oftentimes a logo "face lift" can bring new attention to your company and show your customers that you are a fresh, relevant company that really means business.

Here are a few before and afters from some re-branding projects we've worked on at Perceptivity Studio.