So the other day i got my monthly fido bill from the mail as usual, but i noticed that the envelop felt much thicker and hard than normal paper, i thought it must be some kind of fancy promotion. As i opened it to see whats inside, again the paper is much thick like cardboard; "it says no body rewards you like fido", and has images of all kinds of products like handsets, accessories, and plans. As i look down, there is a fido rewards card with my name printed on it, til then i realized that i could use the 'money' on this card towards the purchase of an item at fido. Apparently i have $153 that i can spend which means i can get a new phone for free. The 'money' or points is accumulated each month as you use pay your bill, this is actually the first time i feel appreciated by using their service, i think its a great way to keep their customers sending a message that fido not only cares about bring new customers but also values the customers that have been with them for many years.
when i saw the ad about fido rewards on the streets i had no idea what its about, but once i received it in the mail it all made sense, and i think its a great strategy to surprise the customers.
Real rewards from Fido
D.A.N.C.E
I came across this video recently, it’s for the current single D.A.N.C.E by the band Justice, and it completely blew my mind. It’s a brilliant video that displays flash animation on t-shirts of real people. The interaction between the animation and people is outstanding and really well put together. The song is looped around the Jackson 5, refrain of “Do the D.A.N.C.E/1 2 3 4 fight…etc. After the video was released many of the t-shirt designs were put up for sale and created a buzz in both the music and fashion industry. If you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest that you watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_QVq2lGMs
Enjoy!
How much $$$ does it take to sell a name?
$25 million was the price paid by Rogers Communications (the owners of the Toronto Blue Jays) to buy the "Skydome"... now, I'm not really a big sportsfan and this would normally go completely unnoticed to me, but the fact that it involved taking a well known part of the Toronto skyline and RENAMING it definitely did not go unnoticed. It is interesting to me the moves that key players make in the business world... this was not just the acquisition of a company/sports stadium/what-have-you that was struggling... this was some smart advertising, as people not only refer to the new place as the "Rogers Centre" (this still sounds weird to me) but also engage in conversation about the name change. When people are talking about your brand... the brand itself stays fresh and in centre-stage. Kinda.
I recently purchased the new electronic (& Canadian!) Monopoly edition (it uses credit cards instead of paper money! VERY fun if you're a [geek!] board game lover like myself) and, sure enough, Rogers Centre is one of the spots you can purchase (for a few million dollars, of course).... which makes me think: what next? The CN Tower? How much money will it take to change ITS name??! I thought it'd never happen, but with Scotiabank Theatres and the like, who knows!
Roberto Cavalli @ H&M
I'm sure a lot of you have heard about the Roberto Cavalli @ H&M event that occured yesterday. Being part of the crowd, I've decided to write this week's post about the experience. Public transit as a brand
When you think of public transit you most often think of the TTC and the first image that comes to mind would be that horrible excuse of a logo that they use. However there are many other forms of public transit with much better design and branding. Currently Go Transit is advertising themselves as a more comfortable way to get places, a place where you can sleep, read, and catch up on life, instead of wasting it in traffic. Their logo, newly updated, still seems traditional, however gets the point across that you should take Go to get you to your destinations. York Region used to only have YTR busses, which stands for York Region Transit, whose appearance were just as sad as the TTC’s. But within the last four years has come up with a high tech, well designed and though up mode of public transit. ViVa Busses are a quick reliable method to get you across the city. Not only is the logo modern and well designed the ideals of the company is also well thought out.
My Vice is...
My vice is indeed slice! Previously known as the Life Network, relaunched itself in 2006 as slice a more " entertainment based lifestyle proggraming." The channel now mostly shows reality TV shows, its amazing how many different reality shows there are now, as opposed to a few years back. There are shows on everything from losing weight, getting married, designing clothes and having makeovers. And its no wonder reality tv has grown so much, there is something out there for everyone, something so addictive but perhaps sad, about watching hours and hours of tv about the lives of other people. But that perhaps is reason to its success, most people shown on slice are regular folks, who have problems, ups and downs just like you and me.
When to draw the line in design
Marketing has and always will play an integral role with regards to branding and advertisement. Unfortunately for Trident, the results of a recent series of advertisements published into the UK media shows one of the many faults of market testing. Within the advertisement, a black male with a heavy Caribbean accent became increasingly excited about Trident Gum, and the series of adverts ended in his catch phrase “Mastication for the Nation”. Costly research methods were used, including heavy input from members of various African and Caribbean communities. It had intended on promoting the product as ‘Adventurous, youthful, playful and distinctive. Once released, an innumerable amount of complains were filed, and Cadbury had no choice but to pull the ads.
Unfortunately, research can be thoroughly completed on any design you wish to create and resources can be poured into development and finalization. However, there will always be a dislike harbored towards it. Whether someone views playfulness as poor taste, or elegance as being snooty, there will always be a population who fails to see the perfection that you have attempted to pour into your work. Now, here’s something interesting to think about: Should there come a point where the designer decides that they cannot please everyone? When posed with such a branding problem, Should larger companies (ie: Cadbury) realize that there would always be a small population who finds their work offensive and stick to their hypothesis? What are the repercussions of sticking to your ‘offensive’ ideas?
Fedex has definately been targeted towards a younger audience with this new look to their advertising. I believe that this work is great, very simple and straight to the point, while also using a major component, the boxes. This is just one of many award winning pieces that BBDO Toronto has put out this year. The entire campaign for Fedex international shipping is very smart. BBDO has definately changed the way Fedex looks as a brand character and has made them more appealing to wider audiences. I just ordered something and it arrived in Fedex, it was great.
Logo recognition
I was just walking by the new Umbra store near queen st. and noticed their logo. Aside being pink and white something bothered me and soon I realized their logo looks like York University's logo which was rebranded a few years back. Umbra is a modern home decor company based in Toronto, which recently changed their visual identity. This came about when the design firm Concrete noticed that Umbra had several different logos in their catalogue. This was brought to their attention and Umbra felt they needed to make some changes. They needed a stronger brand identity which would help with better brand recognition as well as to help prevent knock-offs with their products. They also wanted a logo that would work well on all design applications as well as to convey something more young, contemporary and legible - one of their main problem with the old logo was illegibility. They also used the U to represent one of their most successful and earliest product - the plastic flip-top garbage can.
I do agree that the current brand is much more solid and recognizable, but the "optima" style U reminds me too much of York University, who ironically uses a bold sans serif U with serif logotype - it oddly appears to be switched around.
Latest to Give In to the Cooper Black Craze
Applebees, to me, has always been one of those restaurants just like every other. There's very little distinction between Kelseys, TGI Fridays, Montanas, and the rest of them, all having roughly the same menu, prices, and crappy service. Their old, cheap logo has finally been put to rest, however, and Applebees has launched this. Personally I like the word mark much, much more, however there's something that irks me. Maybe it's the dull green? That hideous 2 tone apple (it reminds me of a woman with dark lip stick and light lip liner, and that is a very bad thing). They also seem to have subscribed to the new cooper black craze. While Payless Shoes got rid of their tired cooper black, Harveys had adopted it for their new and disappointing tag line "It's a beautiful thing". Applebees also is using it for their new tag line "Together is Good", replacing the title "Neighborhood Bar and Grill", and I actually kind of like it. Call me crazy. However, the main problem I see with this revamp is that the logo is still just as bland as the food they serve. If they're gonna revamp themselves i hope they started with the product and not the brand.
Consumer Generated Money Machines
Fast Company - Amateur Hour, Web Style
The link above is to a great article by NYT's Magazine columnist Rob Walker. While I think everyone has been buzzing on the high of being named both Agency of the Year, and Person of the year in 2006, I'm glad someone like Rob has brought up a new opinion about the real motivation behind consumer-generated content. I personally had very hard time that anyone has that much time on their hand's to spend making creative homage's to their favorite brands for the fun of it. Rob's perspective makes a lot more sense to me, these people are interested in not just building the company's brand, but their own brand in a sense.
This symbiotic process could lead us into a very interesting time full of people looking to get rich/famous and fast. I'm waiting for the day when instead of dellsucks.com, we have mentosdietcokeguysblow.com. Another blog discuss a presentation that Rob gave at a recent conference in which he puts forth the idea that today's youth are not rebelling against commercial culture, they are creating it. Check it out here
Ideas stepping on ideas.
These two ads are almost identical to each other, yet conveys different messages. I appreciate that the outcome is different, one is about the hungry mouths of power outlets and the other is about the big mouth of the Audi A4. The MTV ad is for an environment saving “charity” and Audi is an environment destroying car. It is almost ironic how same image can be viewed as totatlly different ads. Ideas stepping on ideas. Despite all these dissimilarities, they are ridiculously similar. What's makes the difference? I guess it's the soundtrack and the headline. Tone and mood of the ad is very much relying on the music.
do FC
I was introduced to the do brand in my first year at OCAD, as I had a project based on this brand. They describe themselves as, ‘a brand where you decide what will happen next.’ It is a really interesting product design brand. You can visit their site to see some of their other products, but being a soccer fan I was interested in this one. Its called do FC. Below is the products description; it will give you an idea of do’s products.
‘In this kit you find anything you needed to play football with the aid of 5 rolls of ready-made tape. With the first roll you can make the football. Another roll enables you to have a stadium of spectators. The do pitch tape marks out your pitch and the shirt tape defines which team you are playing in; do FC or the opposing team. Then finally, you have the cup tape, turning any object into a silver cup. With some simple, easy steps you can football anywhere, anytime.
Cardboard carrier bag containing five rolls of masking tape and an instruction booklet.’
do site: http://www.kesselskramerpublishing.com/
vibrant performance
I just bought a new aftermarket exhaust for my car a while back. The brand I bought was from Vibrant Performance. Not only are their products made well in quality and sound amazing, they are a Canadian brand that is successfully growing in popularity among the aftermarket performance car scene. Personally the logo strikes to me as something memorable perhaps because of the way the angled pattern around the "v" of vibrant is placed. It reminds me of a RPM meter and the pattern illuminating the logo itself seems to be vibrant. In any case, I’m happy and satisfy with my exhaust and wouldn't mind repping their logo on my zoom-zoom!
Ingredients Facts
Nowadays, more and more people are aware of everything they surrounded should be healthy and eco-friendly. These are two great examples showing how people begin to corporate ideas of eco-friendly with our daily objects, and also combine something interesting and easy to be recognized.
If you ate this cookie quickly enough, you might not notice how bad it is for you. Art and design team Andrew Andrew specializes in printing edible photographs (and company logos) onto cookies to put accurate nutrition labels onto the cookies themselves with icing top in edible ink (cost: $25 for a set of 2).
Similarly, a cotton t-shirt with all the clothing facts printed on it, here used to demonstrate an eco-friendly printing procedure: no sweatshops, no harsh chemical dyes, just cotton & water-based inks.
Meridian Credit Union
After the presentation last week, I got thinking about my bank, and how it identifies itself. As Barbara mentioned, Credit Union's rely on their reputation of offering a superior, personalized banking experience. Everyone pays into a share in the bank's stocks, which creates a feeling of involvement in the running of the union. Even the name itself suggests belonging to an organization, rather than simply being a customer.
Each Credit Union is independently run and owned, so they all have unique identities. The meridian visual identity is a calming blue and exuberant yellow in the shape of a smile. I think it really plays up the personality of the Union, and separates it from more corporate identified financial groups.
Fiji & Sustainable
Fiji Water makes annual sales of $150 million. But, Fiji is not being sustainable and helping the environment.
After several attacks on the bottled-water industry (Fiji, Nestle, Coca-Cola) which are selling unnecessary product at great environmental cost - made them rethink their market positioning or you could say social responsibility. Currently Fiji is working on new strategies in becoming more environmental friendly company and less usage of the plastic.
Fiji announced a strategic plan to be carbon negative — that is, to more than make up for the greenhouse gases released in the creation, transportation and sales of its product. They also announced future goals for using renewable energy, preserving forests and conserving water. Well its about time that all companies get on the bandwagon of sustainability.
Some other environmental points that are in the works such as; planning to install a windmill in 2009 to provide energy to its bottling plant in Fiji in the South Pacific. The transportation of the product will be replaced from trucks to ships from the production plant. The Fiji Water Foundation and Fiji’s owners, have pledged money to protect the Yaqara Valley watershed,which is the main source of Fiji Water.
Like its competitors Coca-Cola, that makes Dasani purified water, has changed its manufacturing method which has helped them to increase recycling and reduce the weight of plastic bottles.
I think this move should have been done a few years ago, but its better now than never. This a mandatory requirement in this day and age - being environmentally friendly and sustainable, is a must!
It was Better with You here.
"Dear A Brassard,
I'm writing to say that we are sorry to see you go. Even though you are no longer using Bell for your home phone service, we are still thinking about you. You were a valued member of our Bell family and we truly appreciate having been of service.
We would like the opportunity to earn your business back. Should you choose to come back to Bell, we will waive the reconnection fee. This is just one of the many special offers we have waiting for you."
I think it speaks for itself. But if most of you are not shocked by this, I'm (in this case) sorry. This is just a bad example of how a company, which really knows nothing about you, attempts to claim they really care and think about you. It'd be different if I was an employee and that I had worked at Bell for quite some time, or if I was a shareholder or some other more reasonable case---but fact is, I'm a Bell home phone client, one of many. I might have accepted some special offers without the "really I'm your bio-dad" attitude I got from this greeting card gimmick. It's not honest to pretend that a corporation is your friend when I'm sure they wouldn't even know my sex from reading my name. Bell, quit pretending, no one is buying it---at least I'm not. I think it hurts your image alot more than just being true to what you are in the first place.
Can't wait to go to playland
After perusing through a number of awards annuals that have just recently come out I think I may have found what could possibly be my favourite ads from this year. The Play Land ads are intriguing, funny and if you like a crazy ride you are more than wishing you could experience some of theses ones first hand. The series with the different objects is great and I was so excited to see it first but when I found the campaign with the vomiting stuffed animals I was sold. Unfortunately the website is quite inferior to the campaign but they got me there regardless.
The campaign is clearly targeting die-hard ride fans and I am one of those. The simplicity and brilliance of the art direction in the first series blew me away. The stuffed toys killed me though. I just wish the website had followed through with the brand identity I got from the ads. Maybe I am expecting too much. Anyway I'm off to Vancouver to hopefully run into one of the stuffed animals puking.
Without breath, there is no life.
I saw this ad on the ttc one morning (please excuse my poor camera phone quality) and it literally left me breathless.
"Without breath, there is no life. Cystic Fibrosis can cause severe breathing problems that make everyday tasks difficult. Eventually, it becomes fatal. Please help give the breath of life."
I want to bring attention to the visual because I really don't know what I can say. I'm left almost paralyzed looking at an innocent child doing what children do...but deflated and possibly dead? How serious of a problem does the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation want to make it?
Sometimes a little change can produce a big fuss ...
Very recently the brand people at BBC Radio over in Britain decided that it would be a good, strategic idea to rebrand their radio news bulletins by having their presenters on BBC Radio 4 begin their news brief with "BBC news" and end it with "BBC news for Radio 4." The original method involved simply stating the news brief and following it with "BBC Radio 4 news."
While this change seems unnecessary and a bit excessive, it is pretty miniscule so you'd expect no one to notice, let alone care ... right? WRONG. Listeners were PISSED. Angry messages filled the message boards. The change was meant to simplify the BBC new identity and the listener response suggested that it did anything but.
After the poor response the BBC people decided on a different intro/outro phrase that was then criticized by the radio personalities on its remaining lack of simplicity. One employee was even quoted as saying, "I can't believe BBC pays someone to sit around and think about stuff like this."
Wow, I can't can't believe the outraged reactions these people had to such an insignificant change. Really makes branding seem like walking on eggshells.
FacebookAd - A Marketers Dream
The mega social networking brand that is Facebook is teaming up with advertisers to use the information we put out into the digital world freely, to better sell to us more products and services and advertise their brands to our 'facefriends'.
Big businesses and mega corps like Amazon and Blockbuster have their own facebook pages inticing their consumers to share their brand pages with their online face friends, spreading the word about the newest release on their homepage or wall. Sounds like free ad space and a whole new level of brand loyalty.
The idea is so that, "ads are less like ads and more like information and content. Facebook is offering the Beacon placement and branded pages for free. In return, the social-networking site gains access to potentially valuable targeting data about what kinds of brands users interact with."
This topic is fairly complex and the best way to understand Facebook's new move is to visit the link below & read the article.
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=121806
Compaq logo before vs after
Compaq has got a brand new look. The biggest change is the typeface, but nothing else has changed, they are even sticking to old corporate colour. Many people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the new design and comment that they are not familiar there is even a new one. But me, I prefer the new one. The old one was good as well, but I often thought that whenever I saw it, it was too ordinary to compare with other computer logos. I am still not totally used to the new one, but its appeal is growing on me. It has very unique concept on its new logo. The most important appeal is the change in the original “Q”. The italic “Q’ is changed to more rounded typeface and seems to be focused a lot. One of the purposes of using it was for its appearance on their laptop, like Sony and Apple have on theirs. That is more symbolic, futuristic, and sleek. It looks that they are trying to be more conceptual in a comparison to other computer companies and I hope this will work well for them. Change is always hard, but eventually we all get use to it.
Good-bye grammatically incorrect quotation marks
In keeping with its recent re-branding effort in its stores, Toys R Us has also revamped its logo. The new logo drops the quotation marks around the backwards R and moves the star graphic from it previous prominent position surrounding the R to a more subtle location within the R. The letters have also changed slightly in size, spacing and color. Above, are the old and new logos for comparison.
Im pretty sure Leo Burnett USA is behind the new logo as they have been in charge of the re-branding campaign since 2001 that has seen major changes in store as well as Toys R Us's giraffe mascot Geoffry.
Holiday Inn Loses The Script
The new Holiday Inn identity uses an angled letter ‘H’ in white on a bright green background. Although the word mark has been redesigned, it does keep some traits from the original H including the extended crossbar to the left and right, and an inward curve of the right stem.
When Errol showed us the Brand Alphabet poster on Friday, I was able to quickly identify most of them – especially the Holiday Inn H. Since Holiday Inn has been around for so long, many people know it well and its logo has obtained a timeless quality similar to that of Coca-Cola and Nike. The reverse slant of the earlier script is an identifiable part of the Holiday Inn brand. It seemed to imply a reaching-out, a gesture of hospitality to the passersby. To me the forward slant of the new design just looks fast. Maybe slick, but no implied hospitality or connection.
I’m not sure if giving up the iconic Holiday Inn script logo was a great idea. Instead of a slight and so far comprehensible evolution, it seems the new branding tries to part the brand from its historical achievements. To me it’s a pretty drastic jump from their original logo – especially the brighter shade of green. What do you think?
VANCOUVER
Alright, knowing that I just may be the only person in this class who follows professional hockey or even professes to care, this might be hard, but bear with me.
The Vancouver Canucks recently changed their team colours and logo, thus the image of their franchise. The new combination is a throwback to retro Canucks colours, back from the 'stick-in-a-box' era of the franchise (the logo was a rectangular representation of a rink with a stick cutting horizontally in the middle to form a 'C'), while retaining the current Orca logo that the team has been trying over past years to integrate into the team's image. The result is sort of a mess.
One, the Orca has little to do with the franchise, hockey, or Vancouver in general. The retro graphic logo that came with the colour scheme is simply much more effective.
Two, the word VANCOUVER is blazoned over the logo not only on the away jersey but on the home jersey. As if the good folks in Vancouver need to know what city they're in.
