Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

I quite like the look of this business, Logomarket

On Logomarket.com, 120 designers present more than 5,000 logo designs to potential customers. The showcases contain logo designs for sale at fixed prices. The fixed price includes delivery in the file format of your choice, as well as unrestricted usufruct rights for all possible uses. All logo designs on offer are exclusive, i. e. once purchased they are no longer available for sale.

Usually we brief an agency or designer, wait three weeks, have an idea sold to us and then we get an invoice for thousands. Can you sense a little cynicism here?

Logomarket turns it on the head. You can choose a logo, from a vast choice, for prices starting at about £100. For a lot of start-ups this could represent an excellent service.

Hertz blue key fob

If I were the guardian of the Hertz brand I’d be shaking my head. Surely the Hertz logo is yellow?

The Hertz Corporation (also known as Hertz Rent A Car or simply Hertz) is the world’s second largest car rental company, with 1,900 locations in the United States and 5,100 worldwide behind Enterprise, but is the largest general use car rental company in the world. Source: Wikipedia

Copenhagen

This blue Hertz key fob was with the key of a car rented from Copenhagen airport a few days ago.

Mind you, there are some funny goings on with brands in Copenhagen. Look at all the logos on this building! The building is Industriens Hus.

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?

Children In Need

It takes long enough for a charity to develop a trusted brand name. Protecting it can be even harder.

This BBC Children In Need collection box, seen in a fish and chip shop in Reading is labelled 2006 (last year) and uses the BBC Children In Need logo.

On closer inspection it appears that the funds are being collected for some local toddler group. There is a label on the top that has been added.

Misrepresentation or what?

2012 Olympics Logo

The 2012 Olympics logo – I’m not sure I’ve got the energy for this debate!

What do I think of it? Well, at the risk of being controversial, I think it has a fair bit going for it. Who else is using that colour? Who else has used those shapes? What other logo has been recently launched and become so well recognised so quickly.

Some very well scripted vitriol to the contrary is available at Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog – art: How Lisa Simpson got ahead at the Olympics

I am always mindful that a good slagging off from The Guardian doesn’t mean it is a commercial failure.