Don’t get yanked around by your agency
Posted by Nate Archibald on July 1, 2008
No matter what kind of business you run, it is imperative to maintain an active relationship with your advertising and marketing partners in order to be sure your brand stays fresh. This often entails exploring new market positioning, continual analysis of your competitors’ moves, and keeping abreast of industry trends… while hopefully trailblazing a few yourself.
Of course, one of the easiest ways to do this is to update your corporate logo. Over time, many become seemingly antiquated as newer brands are rolled out and younger companies emerge. By exploring newer fonts, utilizing more modern phrasing and implementing a slicker design, many logo transitions can be quite seamless.
The same cannot be said for The Office of Government Commerce in England. They decided it was time to develop a fresh logo, so they hired a team of designers. $28,000 later, their branding partner presented them with this:
Not bad at all. Clean, concise, soft curves, and with a fluid continuity—distinctly modern. A great next generation progression from the original…
The next logical step was to throw that baby on some mousepads and roll this momentous event out internally. A launch was set and then the rest of the company were delivered their new logo mousepads.
But those mousepads weren’t always positioned correctly on their desks. Sometimes they were turned 90 degrees. And sometimes, a change in perspective is all you need to see the world in an entirely new light:
Like I said, OGC probably just wanted a fresh logo. But clearly, this was the wrong definition of fresh.
A company spokesperson defended the logo by saying:
“The proposed version, which you have sent over, has been shared with staff, and is now going through final technical stages. It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters ‘OGC’ – and is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on government spend!”
A “firm grip” indeed.
