Drive-By Marketing at Its Worst
Drive-By Marketing: Where you pay someone an obscene amount of money for “branding” and/or “marketing strategy” and end up with something like this:
explained as:
“This is the vision at the very heart of our brand,” said London 2012 organising committee chairman Seb Coe.“It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world.
“It is an invitation to take part and be involved.”
Blah-blah-blahhhhhh….As Seth Godin notes in Actually it’s a jaggy picture, if you’re paying money to somebody who talks like this - stop.
Sadly, this kind of flim-flammery is all too common and even the biggest companies fall for it (See my posts He’s Still An Old Dead White Guy and Stupid Brand Tricks about KFC’s change in logos). But, KFC has some big bucks to blow - I really hate it when I see small businesses get hit by drive-by marketing. For example, when I ask a man for a stack of cards (so I can promote his services to others) and he doesn’t have any…because - well - his marketing guru had to first find a new name for his company…then they’ll get a logo…then they’ll do “web development”…then maybe he’ll get his cards. Hello? Marketing is about communicating so you can form relationships so you can - yes - sell something! Let’s not confuse the “creative process” with the “making money process.” (Do I need to mention that his guru apparently didn’t do a URL search before coming up with a new name for the company? Nahhhh….)
Wacky idea: What if - instead of blowing money on this pretentious logo thing - Mr. Coe and committee had spent the dollars for young athlete scholarships? Or, paying expenses for a group or two of inner-city or Special Olympics athletes to attend? Great thing to do and would generate tons of positive buzz. Take part and be involved, indeed.
P.S. I’d love to go to London in 2012 for the Olympics - but not because of the new logo. I’d go because London is one of my favorite cities and a great jumping off point to do a little European travel before or after the events. If anything, this jaggy thing puts me off - particularly since I hate the color.
Read More:
All my Branding Blah-Blah posts
All my Marketing Troubleshooting posts
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so. It may take a bit to show up since I hate making people type in little letters (I can’t read most of them myself) - so I moderate all comments. Feel free to disagree - debate is healthy. However, I’ve blacklisted the worst obscenities, including the “f” word, as part of the troll wall.
Tags: brand, branding, marketing troubleshooting, entrepreneur sanity check, London Olympics
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June 5th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Oh yeah…as always right on the money.
I saw an even better Business Card screw up. A small business owner got a great price on business cards, and had a few thousand printed up. She intended to have a website, so she went ahead and put on the url, www.herbusinessnamehere.com - only to find out later, when one of her customers told her, that the site linked to a business in Iowa, not hers in New England.
She’s still handing out those business cards, wrong email and url included, two years later. She saved under a grand by not hiring a company to do the graphic design and website as a package. Oh yeah, did I mention the clip art on her cards? Gack….
June 5th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I also love London (been there twice so far) but I don’t see how this logo says anything about London.
Hugh McLeod at Gaping Void spent a post talking about the launch party for this logo (he was invited to attend) and came away with a much different response.
In the post, he talks about the organizers’ hope that the Olympics will encourage young people to strive to be the best and to reach their potential.
But I just don’t see how a funky fuschia and yellow logo that looks like it was cut out of construction paper by a caffienated four year old will inspire anyone.
June 5th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Mark, I’m sorry but that woman has no business still being in business. Gack is right.
Timothy - I guess if your target market is caffienated four year olds (versus cranky caffienated 49-year-olds like me)…The logo in and of itself is harmless enough;it isn’t, after all, the city or event. It’s the thought of all that money just thrown down a rat hole. Sigh…
P.S. Never, ever put your web site on your biz card if the site doesn’t already exist (and has been tested to work correctly.) And, no, you can’t have an “under construction” sign either. You can easily enough put up a page of introductory info (Something along the lnes of “We’re in launch mode right now, and here’s what we do…if you’d like to know when we’re going live, drop your email here…”) You can even set up an interim site in something like Wordpress (with your own domain.) In today’s Google world, the worst thing you can do is pass out a card sending people to something that doesn’t exist.
P.P.S. If your web developer thinks its fine to take your site live with “under construction” on some pages… fire ‘em. He or she may be as creative as Da Vinci, but is totally clueless about marketing and business.
June 5th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Ok - so I’m 43 - but when I look at that logo I think of the Flintstones!
London is one of my favorite cities too - we should meet up there sometime!!!
July 6th, 2007 at 6:41 am
[…] Too bad London didn’t think of this for the 2012 Olympics. […]
May 29th, 2008 at 8:11 am
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