Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Woolworths fascia

Should people play around with corporate logos?

I think Google has added to their brand image by creating seasonal treatments for its logo. St Patrick’s Day and Christmas themes spring to mind. The modifications have given their business more of a sense of personality.

Here, in the photo, is the temporarily tweaked Woolworths fascia board from Broad Street, Reading. I’m in two minds as to whether this approach really works. I may be feeling negative as the snow covered doughnut bits are stuck over the letters in a temporary fashion.

This subject reminds me of the time when an enthusiastic marketing manager for Penguin Books in Australia changed their world famous logo – they put the Penguin on a surfboard and gave him some sunglasses! Normal use of the logo was resumed quite quickly.

What’s your view on this subject?

Aston Martin DB9

I spent a chunk of the weekend trying to explain what ‘cool’ means to Charlie, my 5 year old son. Then today I tripped across the Superbrands Coolbrands 2007/2008. I think I’ll not show him this list just now as it won’t make things any easier!

Well done though to a Aston Martin – topping the table against high tech and new brands.

The top 10 cool brands are:

1. Aston Martin
2. iPod
3. YouTube
4. Bang & Olufsen
5. Google
6. Sony PlayStation
7. Apple
8. Agent Provocateur
9. Nintendo
10. Virgin Atlantic

Click here for the full list of cool brands.

Superbrands have also published their list of the top 500 Superbrands for this year. Topped by Microsoft, Coca Cola, Google, BBC and BP you can see the list by clicking here.

Bento Yum

So many businesses have become Google dependent. And we all know that monopolies are rarely good for business.

So how’s this for an experiment: Grow a new online business while excluding it from Google and other major search engines.

See this article Hide and Speak: Google, We Don’t Need No Stinkin‘ Google! for the details of the experiment that Jennifer Laycock is conducting with the business Bento Yum. It will be interesting to follow the progress.

This is a very clever piece of software. It’ll be interesting to see where MyHeritage take their business.