Branding Common Sense
One of the things I do is study and develop that tricky concept called "branding." Branding is a big deal, of course, but sometimes... it's a little strange. Naturally, I can't help but observe the process of "rebranding" when it happens in front of me and that's been going on a lot in the telecom industry in recent years.One of the most recognized brands in the world is AT&T. Two years ago, this telecom giant went through something like a brand facelift.
A friendlier logo maybe? It had been likened to a "Death Star" - I can see the resemblance. I wonder if this pop culture reference, at least in part, influenced the gravity of its new design.
Still, the new logo looks kind of like a tiger-striped 3-D pacperson.
We all learned recently how predatory this brand really was when AT&T ate, er, bought, Cingular.
Cingular's logo was a great example of modern design. Friendly, human-like shape. Lots of orange juicyiess that spilled over into all aspects of branding. Plastiglass shininess. But AT&T decided to simply end its life in a campaign that explained matter-of-factly, "Cingular is now AT&T." Every time a company goes through a brand shift (or is consumed by pacpeople), it's a good idea to explain this to customers through marketing. It's a positive thing! Really, Cingular customers! Don't worry... now that you are AT&T customers, your service will improve since we are very large. Like all brand changes, it's nearly impossible to get rid of the old brand completely. I can imagine "former" Cingular employees using their happy-orange-guy coffee mugs for years.
Other telecom brands have been through brand shifts that resulted in less clearcut results as being utterly assimilated. Take for example Sprextelbarq. First, there were just Sprint and Nextel. Somehow, the two merged (or something) and spawned a new, very green, brand called Embarq. Sprint's brand was (and remains) based on the "pin drop" idea. As far as I can tell, Sprint really REALLY wanted their brand to be all black and yellow. And so it is now. The black and yellow Nextel thing was certainly noticeable, if a bit stark. But what really burns me (to this day) is the Nextel "logo."
Did you miss it? Yes, it is a black bar. A lower case "L." Or perhaps a sans-serif capital "I." I struggle to imagine how such an inane, minimalistic concept made it to the final stages of planning and discussion at Nextel. Is it that thing from 2001: A Space Odyssey? I've encountered few logos that seem quite so ambiguous.
I was so confounded by what really happened to Sprint that I went to a local strip mall in town that has both a Sprint store and a Nextel store just to observe the communications used in-store (brochures, signs, etc.). As it turns out, Sprint doesn't really mention Nextel except that they are "together" -- "Sprint. Together with Nextel." Nextel's equally "together" by statement alone. They just stare across the parking lot at each other, announcing their black and yellow unity. It's a mystery why this color scheme ties the two brands together, but it has something to do with Not Being At All Green.
Like Embarq. Embarq is the sorta-new-but-partially-mostly Sprint. They poured millions into a campaign to announce their "new" company. And it really didn't have anything to do with Sprint. Nothing like "Sprint is now Embarq." Or "Embarq - All The Good Things You Loved About Sprint And None Of The Bad!" It was this green paper airplane that came flying in to help us with things like internet access.
The different shades of green and the triangle shapes were everywhere. White backgrounds, green triangles, black text. That's Embarq branding in a nutshell. The airplane idea seemed to have been created to bolster their equivalent to the "pin drop" which was a slogan, "This Way to Common Sense." I think Embarq embodies modern branding ideas pretty well except for one major problem that I can't help but LOL every time I see it.
Does this make sense? In a strange and ironic twist, the Embarq branding "rules" were such that apparently the airplane must always be going to the right. Never to the left. As it turns out, one of the most common encounters with the Embarq logo is not on TV, a billboard, or on your monthly bill. It's on the vans. And exactly 50% of the time you see the van, it has the airplane pointing towards the butt end of the van as it drives down the road proclaiming "This way to common sense!" If they had a little more "branding common sense" they would loosen up just a tad and allow their airplane to be facing towards the fronts of vans on either side.
Telecom branding. A strange world indeed.
