Dynamic Logos: All the Rage?

In an article called “The new corporate logo: dynamic and changeable are all the rage,” Alice Rawsthorn of the International Herald Tribune discusses dynamic logos and the move away from rigid usage policy.

Google’s constantly changing logo is part of a broader trend toward what are called dynamic identities: corporate symbols that adopt different guises at different times or in different contexts, so you’re never sure exactly how they’ll look.

The latest is the new identity of Saks Fifth Avenue, the American department store chain. A 1973 Saks signature logo was revived — and refined — by the Pentagram design group, then sliced into 64 components that are arranged in different configurations on bags and boxes. “Fragmenting the logo gave it energy and bravura,” said Michael Bierut, the Pentagram partner who led the Saks project. “And now we can create numerous permutations of the logo.”

Dynamic identities fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that consistency is essential to an effective corporate identity. The more we see the same corporate symbol — or so the consistency camp argues — the more likely we’ll be to recognize and remember it. Companies adhered to this throughout the 20th century; and the designers of some of the most successful identities, such as Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books in the late 1940s, and Paul Rand as a consultant to IBM from the 1950s to the early 1990s, were renowned for their rigor.

It’s a quick, interesting piece about logo evolution, and worth reading if you have anything invested in your company’s visual identity, but I’ll save you the effort and tell you how it ends:

It’s easy to see why dynamic identities should strike a chord with today’s spoiled, impatient and — to give us some credit — visually savvy consumers, but there are instances where the old-fashioned approach works best. “MTV has a dynamic identity because they are dynamic, and I want them to be,” [graphic designer Bruce] Mau said. “But I don’t want my bank to be dynamic. I want them to be conservative and radically stable.”

In other words, nothing groundbreaking here after all. Companies like Google and MTV who strive for “hipness” can afford to change their logo daily if they like; those of us in companies with personas focused on stability, consistency, quality, industry anchoring… we can’t exactly go about putting holiday motifs on or cutting the thing up into jigsaw puzzle pieces.

No One Wants to Be Sold

A blog post at the Fast Company Experts site has lots worth pondering:

“People are always looking for specialists to solve their problems. Being recognized as an expert makes your marketing efforts a lot easier. No one wants to be sold, but everyone likes to buy. Being seen as a specialist creates a buying environment, not a sales situation.”

Blogging Another Blog’s Blogging

But, all worth it for the following quote:

[The relationship between knowledge workers and their superiors] is far more like that between the conducter of an orchestra and the instrumentalist than it is like the traditional superior/subordinate relationship. The superior in an organization employing knowledge workers cannot, as a rule, do the work of the supposed subordinate any more than the conductor of an orchestra can play the tuba. In turn, the knowledge work is dependent on the superior to give direction and, above all, to define what the “score” is for the entire organization, that is, what are its standards and values, performance and results. And just as an orchestra can sabotage even the ablest conductor — and certainly even the most autocratic one — a knowledge organization can easily sabotage even the ablest, let alone the most autocratic superior.

You know who you are, when I say directly to you: How can we convince our conductors to conduct, and quit trying to play the effing tuba?

Okay, time for the mother of a cite: the quotation is from Peter Drucker’s book The Essential Drucker. The blog at which I found the quotation was Nivi’s, and I found Nivi via Signal vs. Noise, the blog effort from the 37signals folks.

(Ironically, I find their signal-to-noise ratio about 1:1.)

Bob’s Auto Body Repair and Affordable Public Relations

There’s a running joke in my house about small mom-n-pop outfits that offer the most bizarre combination of services out of the back of a garage. You know the type: the bait shop that will also fix your carburetor and sell you a dozen tamales. Or, the handpainted yard sign advertising “AKC PUPS!!!!” right above “Resume Consulting” and “In Home Child Care.”

So if someone mentions a random service performed by a cottage operation, it becomes “Bob’s Auto Body and [X].”

” — and Livestock Husbandry”

” — and Tech Support”

” — and Collagen Injections”

(really, the comedic possibilities are endless)

What’s funny is the blithe juxtaposition of totally disparate business models — that, yes, of course the same guy who fixes your air conditioner can give you a French pedicure. Of course the lady who’s running a puppy mill out of her back 40 can also give safe care to your toddler.

And this is equally funny.

Of course your domain registrar can also teach you how to run a good media tour. Of course the company that provides B2C website hosting packages can also assist with crisis communications.

(I poke good-natured fun, because I’ve been a loyal user of Dotster’s registrar services for five years, and think they do a fine job.)

I totally appreciate taking a niche brand and expanding it to a master brand, in order to offer relevant products in a vertical market. Hosting, registration, web design… it’s not a huge stretch from providing those, to moving into offering web analytics, podcast development, blog building, email marketing, even live tech support.

And, I totally appreciate strategic partnerships, where a company with a client base for one type of product realizes value in introducing their customers to an affiliated business that isn’t a competitor.

But to go from domain registration to general public relations consulting under the same brand? With nary an ironic wink or explanation?

That’s neither a partnership nor a smart vertical expansion. It’s a marketing non sequitur and a brand dilution.

Dotster got suckered into a partnership with a PR firm, is my guess; both sides likely bartered services with little hard cost, and there won’t be much fallout if everyone takes a look at the numbers somewhere around Q3, and realizes that “MyPR” isn’t performing quite as expected, and then it silently disappears. (psst, Dotster, if you’d like to know why it will fail, give me a call, I’ll tell you for free! Or maybe… a coupon for a free domain!)

Still, fair play to the gang that talked Dotster into it. If you poke around at their site, it’s no surprise that they pushed this: clearly One-Stop Shopping is their business model.

And, at a weird time too, since conventional wisdom is changing and corporate customers are starting to move away from huge PR agencies that provide bundled services — and instead toward more focused operations, with dedicated specialists who have deep domain experience. (And I don’t mean www.thatkindofdomain.com, either.)

In other words, why pay $X000 for Big Shiny New York Mega Firm… where your $X000 only gets you some junior-level account exec… when, at a smaller shop with the right portfolio and lower overhead, the same $X000 gets you a VP or even principal, with a stronger skill set and more investment in the account’s success. Probably even with Big Shiny New York experience on the CV somewhere.

Anyway, call me newfangled but I like my specialists to be specialists. I think I’ll keep getting my puppies and child care and media relations consulting and carburetors and tamales and press releases all from different providers.