Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category

No logos were harmed in the making of this film

written on March 7th, 2010 with 2 comments

“No logos were harmed in the making of this film.” That’s what the director of Logorama joked as he accepted the Oscar for Best Animated Short. But is that true?

Most of the logos in the film are depicted in a harmless way. Some logos even recede into the background as part of the “wallpaper” that is the landscape – they are there, but mostly go unnoticed. In this story, the characters are familiar icons. Ronald McDonald is a villian. Not sure what McDonald’s has to say about that, but they can’t be terribly happy.

Part of the reason the film works is because we have brand associations with these logos, and when a logo is used in an unexpected way, we are in on the “joke” because we know this depiction is not true to the brand. It’s really one of the reasons the film is getting attention.

The movie is the “labor of love” of a French motion graphics studio called H5. I wanted look up and see what else they had done. What I found, was something my inner design geek found even more interesting. Think of all of the product instructions, safety cards and diagrams we encounter everyday, and what it would be like if they told a story. I imagine it would look something like this.

Directed by the French motion graphics studio H5. It features a day in the life of a woman working in the London’s Square Mile solely through infographics; this includes labeled close-ups of everyday objects, product lifecycles, schematic diagrams, charts, and is generally illustrated in a simple isometric visual style.

OBEY the power of the poster

written on February 1st, 2009 with no comments

frogress
I have to thank a coworker for pointing me to this site, Obamicon.me. I’d seen these “Obama-ized” icons on people’s profile pics, but couldn’t figure out where they had been coming from. Actually, they probably should be called “Fairey-ed” icons after the poster designer, Shepard Fairey.

I had first heard of Fairey years ago when the sub-culture “OBEY” stickers were popular. I’m guilty of sticking a few of them myself. It’s funny to think about how his artwork has become ubiquitous – it’s truly taken on a life of it’s own. Much like I remember Fairey’s stickers of the past being subverted. There were so many parodies of “xxx has a posse” stickers.

The Obama poster had a different purpose, but the desire of the public to manipulate art for their own purposes remains the same. It’s “frogress” I suppose.

Was this Motrin Ad Offensive to Moms?

written on November 23rd, 2008 with no comments

After reading about all of the comments on twitter about the Motrin® commercial, I decided yesterday that I finally had to view it myself (search for #motrinmoms to see the conversations). The ad design itself is funny and interesting – also a bit clever, which is what probably got Motrin in trouble.

I can almost image the agency that created this trying to brainstorm all the activities in a mom’s hectic day to see what the real “pain points” are. Whether it’s lugging groceries from the car or bending over your umpteenth load of laundry, there’s plenty of back-busting activities abound. They chose the babysling though, probably because this gives the ad a specific focus and targets a certain demographic for Motrin (hey, there’s lots of infant and children Motrin these moms might need too).

At the risk of getting hatemail, I have to say that I like the concept of this ad. It breaks out of the typical clichéd ad format and attempts to talk to the consumers in the way that two best friends (or in this case moms) might exchange war stories together. The verbiage and voiceover style in the ad is tongue-in-cheek, and statements were exaggerated to be witty and memorable.

Moms remembered the ad all right, but for all the wrong reasons. From what I read, it seems that the references about how babyslings are all the rage (a lot of moms wear these) and how these make you feel like an “official mom” (as if you were doing this for the wrong reason) were the points most of the comments reference as offensive. It appears that these attempts at humor just pushed it a little too far for this particular target audience. In this way, the ad itself failed because it did not resonate with a large amount of their viewers.

Because of the uproar, J&J (who makes Motrin) has since pulled the ad and made a public apology to moms for missing the mark. The bigger question is that now Motrin know about twitter are they going to do things differently next time? Will they mobilize this very audience in a positive way next time (ie: focus groups)? Will they now setup a presence on twitter (they’d had to get their name back first – someone else has it) or their own blog or facebook group? Now that they’ve seen firsthand how swiftly social media conversations can impact their brand, I imagine that they will.

Want to see the ad for your yourself? Here it is.