Design System Archives - Beg to Differ

A fresh look at brand Canada. What do you think?

July 16, 2012 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 15 Comments

It’s fresh. But does it work?

Just today, adiposity thanks to a tip from Toronto agency punk Dave Jones (thanks Dave!), I came across the project below sponsored by American Public Radio International (PRI) radio program Studio 360. The goal: to re-package Canada’s brand for Americans. Tall order, and I think they *mostly* nailed… something here. But what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Beg to Differ in the comments!

BruceMau — Sacrilege or divine revelation? You decide.

But before you weigh in on the success or failure of the exercise, check out these four things:

1) A Summary: from Studio 360 of how it worked and what they were after:

To get beyond hockey, beer, and Mounties, we asked the international firm Bruce Mau Design to come up with a visual rebranding. As part of its research, the BMD team talked with Scott Thompson of the sketch comedy group The Kids in the Hall who summed up the issue simply: “We know you, but you don’t know us.”

“Canada didn’t need to be rebranded or redesigned,” explains BMD President and CEO Hunter Tura. “America needed to be educated. And that is the basis for our campaign: Know Canada.”

2) The brief: to read a more full explanation, click the image below for the agency’s presentation in PDF format:

Horizontal strip — Click here for Bruce Mau design brief (PDF format)

3) The video teaser ad: the YouTube Video below shows how the idea would play out in multimedia format.

The big question: does it work for you?

Visual appeal: does the logo and design system create a memorable foundation for Canada’s brand?
Tag line: do the words “Know Canada” work for you? What do they say – or not say – about us?
Sustainability: can this really work as a brand – or is it just a clever campaign?
Customers: Who is it actually aimed at, and more importantly, for what purpose (i.e. who would pay to roll this out? Tourism? Trade? Canadian Chamber of Commerce?

Update: Oh, and for some more fun summer reading, you can also check out the “Know Canada” Web site here, other 360 Redesign Projects, and the paired Redesigning Project with Jian Gomeshi and CBC Radio Q taking on brand USA . Great discussion on the Brand New blog a few days ago. Articles by Huffington Post, National Post, and Here and Elsewhere.

Does branding cause cancer? Australian smokes go “no logo”.

April 30, 2010 // Dennis Van Staalduinen Leave a Comment

An experiment in “un-branding” to promote community health

Beg to Differ noticed this morning that Australia is planning to ban all logos and distinctive design elements from cigarette packaging. The point: to make them less attractive to smokers. The question: will it work?

Generic packaging

According to the UK Daily Mail, viagra sale quoting the Australian newspaper:

The new laws, purchase to be introduced in January 2012, will prohibit the use of tobacco industry logos, colours, brand imagery or promotional text on the packets. Brand names and product names will have to be displayed in a standard colour, font style and position under the new laws, says the paper.

And why? Here’s what one Australian researcher says:

Documents show that, especially in the context of tighter restrictions on conventional avenues for tobacco marketing, tobacco companies view cigarette packaging as an integral component of marketing strategy and a vehicle for (a) creating significant in-store presence at the point of purchase, and (b) communicating brand image. Market testing results indicate that such imagery is so strong as to influence smoker’s taste ratings of the same cigarettes when packaged differently. (2002 research review by Australian Anti-Cancer Council)

That’s all true. But is there any evidence that removing visible branding will reduce the sales of cigarettes?

Those of us in the branding industry would like to think so. After all, we tell clients all the time that consistently applying and reinforcing your brand elements (logos, names, messages, design motifs) over time will increase your sales. So shouldn’t the opposite be true?

I hope so – and not just as a branding guy, but as a human being who seen friends and family members struggle with cancer.

But don’t forget about filters!

On cigarettes, these don't work. But on your BRAIN?

We’re not talking about cigarette filters – although, ironically, the fact that they don’t work is one of the issues at play here. It’s HUMAN filters that are the biggest reason this effort may not perform as advertised.

“Filter Factors” to consider:

The habit filter: physical addiction is powerful stuff.
The social filter: but smoking is more than just a commercial or health phenomenon; it’s a cultural – or more to the point – counter cultural act. The more you crack down, the “cooler” it becomes in hard-core smoking circles.
The neuromarketing filter: Roger Dooley discusses in this fascinating Neuromarketing blog post how a giant cancer warning on a box actually becomes an ad for smoking over time!
The brand filter: the name is still a brand – and if that’s the only differentiator on the box, that’s what consumers will look for / form relationships with.
The “quest” filter: by making something hard to get or find, you can actually increase people’s desire for it, or at least the “tribal” cachet of having it. The Gold Visa or the Costco card in your wallet are great examples. Why do you pay for them? Because you have to.

So what do you think?

Is “un-branding” a socially undesirable product a good way to discourage people from using it? We want to hear from you!

Logo design: Dear Expedia: a brand is for customers, not golf shirts

January 4, 2010 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 8 Comments

A unique logo design gets dumbed down by board-room egos

This morning, check whilst Beg to Differ was checking our favourite blogs, advice looking for signs of hope in this new decade, order we noticed the sad tale of a re-branding effort -or more accurately a logo design project – at do-it-yourself travel site Expedia.com (via Brand New). Seems that their distinctive, fun little logo wasn’t good enough for “the golf shirt test”…

Unfortunately, this is the deciding factor in too many corporate re-branding excercises.

What’s the “golf shirt test”?

The old Expedia logo design. Too much character for a self-respecting VP of brand marketing…

That’s where an executive evaluates a logo, tag line, name, etc. in terms of how it will look on their golf shirt rather than how well it works for customers.

In this case, it’s logo design. The old design was kind of goofy, maybe a little clip-arty cartoonish, and yes, a bit retro (read “old-fashioned”). But it did just what it was intended to do: it conveyed a clear brand idea. It captured a bit of the excitement and adventure of travel, while giving target customers a strong symbol to help them find, remember, and engage with the service.

Now that might seem like a good thing. But that’s just because you’re thinking like a customer.

Instead, think for a moment like a corporate executive who wants to hit the golf circuit with the big kids from IBM, AT&T, etc., with their important-looking corporate swag. You don’t want to stand out; you want to blend in. And alas, a fun, humanizing image can make a VP feel positively bush league – or worse, like dot-commie.

I get that. I worked for Corel during the heyday of Mike Cowpland and CorelDRAW. So I had to wear ugly shirts with giant rainbow-coloured balloons in the board rooms of Samsung, HP, Compaq, Apple, among others. I understand feeling self-conscious about a dorky shirt and wishing you could just change that bloody logo. (Note: please don’t look to Corel for an example on this one).

The new logo

The new Expedia logo design. Gosh that will look important on a golf shirt.

So when I saw the new Expedia logo design and branding tag (at right) I thought: aha! Golf shirt logic!

This new logo looks just incredibly… grown up. No more fun cartoon plane. Just a generic white jet icon against a boring blue globe. An executive with this logo on a shirt could blend right in with the leaders of airports, international aid agencies, government programs – maybe even defence contractors.

Paul Leonard, VP of brand marketing at Expedia, seems to have golf shirts on his brain. Brand New quotes him as saying:

“The whole look and feel is “less cartoonish”… We were striving for a more timeless and classic aesthetic. It’s a little less whimsical and more sophisticated.”

“Timeless.” “Classic.” “Sophisticated.” All words that are proxies for “Won’t make any impression at all.”

You could even stick this Web page on a golf shirt and no one would complain!

And one assumes Mr. Leonard also chose that very golf-shirt friendly tag line “Where you book matters.” (It’s a shame he forgot to decide why it matters – or if he did, he forgot to tell us).

One also assumes that the he also approved the generic look and feel of the new Web site – with no troublesome differentiating features to help consumers distinguish it from, well, anything else in the travel industry.

Dear executives: it’s not about you

I could go on. But brand managers, please: you need to help your corporate masters understand that branding is not about making them look good on the golf course!

A brand is about three simple things:

Helping customers find you;
Giving them reasons to choose you; and
Creating a relationship that will help them choose you again.

And sad to say, those three things just *might* not look pretty on a golf shirt.

But enough about me: what do you think?

The Best and Worst Identities 2009 – from Brand New

December 21, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen Leave a Comment

One of the Blog to Differ blogs we read every day, information pills Brand New, sickness has released its list of the best and worst brand re-designs for 2009. And apart from quoting Beg to Differ’s Dennis Van Staalduinen (which obviously makes them brilliant and insightful), it’s worth a look. But before you do, read on for a few highlights.

Stuff we’ve both covered

Pizza Hut becoming the Hut. Beg to Differ included a response from Jabba the Hutt, but otherwise, we were in total agreement in panning this identity.

SciFi becomes “SyFy”. Brand New lists this as one of the best of 2009. We Beg to Differ.

But apart from the SyFy choice, and the provocative choice of the truly awful Aol. brand as their #1 identity of 2009 (Brand New’s Armin can’t find anything negative to say about the designers at Wolff Olins apparently). For a review of this identity that is totally on the mark, see Fritinancy.

Where we agree

But because I love their blog and wish them well for the New Year, I’m going to focus on five identities that Brand New is totally right about. But don’t take my word for it, read Brand New for yourself.

Not so much a bad new mark as the death of an iconic old one by design legend Paul Rand.

For a bazillion-dollar company, this identity makes Microsoft look positively bush-league.

Totally lame place-branding for a City that needs to take its image problems more seriously.

Unhealthy, over-processed, and commoditized - and that's just the logo. Icon becomes pastiche.

It's hard to imagine why the term "Hilton Family" would be something you'd be embarassed of... but this design is just deplorable.

Machines that go “ping”: a hospital branding adventure

December 9, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 12 Comments

The first Beg to Differ Branding Field Trip.

Last week, viagra order I blogged on Beg to Differ about the birth of my son. Thank you all for your best wishes and brilliant thoughts on this incredibly moving experience for my wife and other two kids. But on the silly side of my brain, doctor the whole 3 days in the hospital, troche I had lines from the classic “Machine that goes Ping” sketch from Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life going through my head. And I was struck by how heavily branded the hospital environment is. So here are a few branding “pings” from the life and death world of the hospital.

The machine that goes Ping - The Miracle of Birth scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Something completely different

I think Branders need to be students of branding trends, and have a big streak of geekiness. And it’s always best to look at branding practices from an outsider’s perspective. So as a non-medical guy, all these brands were new to me. A few random comments are below.

There’s a surprisingly hard-sell retro throwback feel to a lot of these product names. And in the case of the “V-LOK CUFF” a design style that looks like it came out of the back of a comic book.

Interesting story: at one point, a nurse was putting an intravenous drip into my wife’s arm and asked me to grab what she called an “eye-hand” from the cupboard. I couldn’t find it until she held up a package and I realized she was talking about the “IV3000 1-HAND” above. In our case, the misunderstanding wasn’t serious, but I wonder if that little brand misunderstanding has ever led to more serious consequences. Branding matters!

In a “serious” environment like a hospital, I’d expect muted, understated brand practices – heavy descriptive names and generic product numbers. But I was surprised how many of the product brands seemed to be using edgy or aggressive naming conventions. Notice a small sample of all the “X’s I found in brand names.

I especially like the “Stryker” beds I saw everywhere. Doesn’t that sound like the name of a hero from a cheesey pulp fiction thriller?

In the delivery room, the doctors and medical staff were giddy with excitement to try the “Rollbord” (above) which some were trying for the first time. I noticed that they didn’t call it a “SAMARIT” or even a “Samarit Rollbord” – even though the names are presented graphically at the same size. “Rollbord” is the dominant brand because it’s more useful.

This confused me. In the age of H1N1, I was diligently keeping my hands washed, and when I couldn’t, I would Purell them (note the verb). But the distributor of the hand-pumps above obviously tried to standardize the look and feel of the labels, even though they are different brands (and add French for a Canadian audience). The result? I kept reaching for the Purell when I needed soap and vice versa. In this case, the manufacturer’s branding would have been more useful.

What do you think?

Beg to Differ wants to hear from you:

Any thoughts on these brands? What other branding trends do you see?
Any perspectives on other medical industry brands?
Do you like the branding field trip idea? Thoughts on other field trips we can take?
Volunteers to lead guest expeditions?