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So much corporate branding has gone flat, boring and sterile. There's also guaranteed to be a backlash at some point, with flashy logos and bright colours. It's a pretty good way to stand out at least. Take Mozilla, they went bland, boring, now they're adding a "fun" ASCII lizard. Just embrace the old half-ugly red Godzilla-like lizard, it's fun, distinct, has a history and it's perfectly fine.
We lost pretty much all of the playfulness of the late 90s, early 2000s as companies are playing it increasingly safe. I'd love to see some of it come back, but also businesses segment more. There's no reason a toy store should have the same bland corporate identity as a bank, nor should an investment firma adopt the identity of a record company (or vice versa).
Did the archive miss some imagery, or are there no visual aids for this article? You’d think in a piece about branding they’d have some media to reference…
I think it's a failing of rhe the original article. There are links that show most of the examples, but no inline images.
It's a trend of recent years: for some reason news articles are allergic to images. I've seen articles describing the works or painters with zero images!
It’s not a recent trend. It’s how things have been and are.
My best explanation is that it’s a holdover from when print space was limited, so articles simply don’t show and only tell. When they do add a picture in print, it’s usually to grab attention or signal that this is an important article.
I see an image on that page…?
archive.ph has been hanging for me recently. Here's the is, link: https://archive.is/E8Vqy
Still lower case, though. Joining the ranks of other cool companies like nationwide. I reckon some giant lame brand like Tesco or Walmart will go lower case soon, finally ending the trend.
I would say Aberdeen asset management made two mistakes here:
1) they didn't notice they still had a vowel right at the very start of their name, immediately marking them out to the kids as uncool.
2) Failing to explore/deliver comarketing opportunities. Obviously the Scottish city of Aberdeen could and should have followed suit and dropped the vowels from local signage.
After such elementary blunders it's no surprise to see the rebranding failed.
The mission of a company is to deliver value for customers and shareholders, not to chase fads.
> The mission of a company is to deliver value for customers and shareholders, not to chase fads.
So you think the stock price resembles the delivered value? Or may it be rather the p e r c e i v e d value? And then, how would a company change perception of it's value to make customers and shareholders happy?
When done right, "chasing fads" can be a means towards delivering value to shareholders.
See also: SunnyD, IHOB