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One of the most controversial recent brand launches was undoubtedly when the London 2012 brand was introduced to the world. Within a week from its launch the logo sparked a nationwide debate, hostile questions in the house of commons and apparently, an epileptic fit (do I smell urban myth?).

The brand identity was designed by a London consultancy called Wolff Ollins (their site is one of the more original I’ve seen for a while – very nice) and got praise from some corners and scorn from others (via geekfriendly). It even generated parody logos, as seen on the right.

Regardless of how one feels about the logo itself, the frenzy that surrounded the launch was slightly misguided in one sense: The hoopla around the price tag, which was £400,000. Or as Seth Godin put it, “spending $800,000 for a logo is ridiculous”.

Now, don’t get me wrong. £400,000 is a lot of money. But it wasn’t just a price tag for a logo. Wolff Ollins is a brand consultancy, not a convenience store. In Don’t F*** Mess with the Logo, Jon Edge and Andy Milligan have an interesting take on what a brand actually is:

E x E x E = B

Essence (what you stand for) x Expression (how you communicate it) x Experience (what you actually make or provide) = Brand (what people think of you)

Magic x colour, fun, no cynicysm x family entertainment = Disney

The brand, and identity, is made up of every single facet of the 2012 games: Pens, videos, clothes, imagery, copy text, signs on taxi cabs and buses, stamps – everything has to be thought through and it all has convey a unified message for a very expensive, high profile undertaking.

It may have been extremely expensive … but it’s not just the logo. You’ll see. Hopefully.

2 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days and around 3 hours ago I bought my first Nokia mobile phone. Since I considered myself to be an up and coming business man, I decided to go with the E65. It was love at first sight. I spent a lot of time with my phone and I took it everywhere. Sadly only a month into our relationship my phone got ill. I was devastated and immediately took it to the workshop where it was repaired. I was so happy to get my phone back that I decided to take it on a trip, but in the middle of the trip sadly, it got ill again. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t call anybody so when I got back from my weekend getaway I had to go straight to the repair shop. This went on for a few months until I was compelled to dump the E65 because it was too time consuming! (I know, how harsh of me!) I had invested around $600 in the relationship and all I had was bad memories.

After a while I started to miss E65, I mean it did take decent videos so I started to use it again. Now a few months later and after only about a year of usage E65 died, the workshop said I had to bury it. It only had a 2 year warranty.

I got a crappy phone, I brought it to the workshop 3 times, and the retailer didn’t want to let me exchange the phone for one that actually worked properly. Instead I was forced to bring it back to the workshop every other month. As a customer, I would say this is unacceptable. As a branding enthusiast, I think the retailer isn’t representing one of the world’s largest brand well enough. Nokia doesn’t want to be known for manufacturing phones that have an expiration date. But that might be okay because according to this article when CEO of Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is asked to describe Nokia, the first thing he says is, “We are not a cell-phone company.”

Right now I am dating a 6 year old, phone that is. It is an old but solid Sony Ericsson and the relationship is going great, but let’s face it, it’s just a relapse phone and it will never last.

Last week I published a blog post about the I❤NY brand. Now, London’s mayor Boris Johnson has decided: Get me one of those.

That’s right, the city of London has published an invitation to tender for “creative development and design of a brand for London“.

Moving Brands, a London based brand agency, have been running a blog, A Brand for London, about the process of “crowdsourcing” their own submission. They eventually made their submission available online.

Unfortunately, they didn’t make it into the next round. It would have been interesting to follow the process of developing the brand further, and crowdsourcing it, and Moving Brands certainly had some top-rate people working on the job, including Scott Thomas, Design Director of the historic Obama Presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, we’ll be following the London brand story closely, as part of our team is based there and we love the city. We’re not optimistic that the other agencies will provide us with blogs about how they take their design further, but we can always hope.

Making a successful brand starts within the organization. The values of your company, internally and externally, should be in sync. That is why getting your employees to represent your brand, is extremely important.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Kaupthing and the Icelandic banking crisis. Kaupthing actually used internal branding to encourage their employees, to emphasize on their superiority and how successful they were. Here you can see video that was made for the eyes of Kaupthing employees.

What do Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa and Neo (you know, The One in The Matrix) have in common with Kaupthing? I don’t know but looking at this comparison while listening to U2, I got to admit, I AM PSYCHED!

This video has similarities to the propaganda movies the Nazis used to promote their ideology. According to Goebbels:

“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it”

If you replace the word propaganda with internal branding, and Goebbels with David Ogilvy this would be a great quote, a little excessive, but still great.

I just signed up for an account at www.gogoyoko.com. I must admit that it is pretty cool. I can make my own playlist, listen to it for free, share it with others and buy music. But that’s not even the best part. Every cent you pay to buy songs goes straight to the Artists! So if you are an artist you should definitely sign up and here’s why.

• You decide the price of your music
• Not only do you get all the revenue of your music, artists will get 40% of advertisement revenue
• 10% of their income from advertisements goes to charity and artists can donate through a portion of their sales.
• Live update of every sale and stream.

Itunes charges copyright holders up to 50% of their revenues. That doesn’t seem fair and is the reason why The Beatles aren’t available on Itunes, though that might change.

But as I and other entrepreneurs know you either make it or break it. Gogoyoko has the potential to be huge, even bigger than The Beatles! Okay not quite as big. But still, they will definitely make it if they follow my advice, here it is: Be the first to make The Beatles available (legally) online. Hell, I will even call my good friend Sir Paul McCartney to make it happen. I met him once at Kaffibarinn, where we had a couple of shots of tequila, true story.

Check out this Video from Gogoyoko.

Fair Play in Music from gogoyoko on Vimeo.

A few months ago, while browsing the book shop in Vienna’s Museum quarter, I came across one of the more interesting books on Branding I’ve seen for a while: Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State, by Steven Heller.

In the book, the author analyzes the branding of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, and Mao’s China and how these regimes used visual language to help them hold their grip on their respective subjects.

Heller uses the language of modern corporate branding to draw comparisons with spine chilling results. Jingles, slogans, fonts, color schemes and logos – all were part of a detailed strategy to put a pretty face on a grisly product. And to inspire brand loyalty.

LVMH Group, is a company that has some of the most prestigious brands in the world. They claim to be the world leader in luxury and are listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. You might have heard of some of their brands like Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Marc Jacobs, Dom Pérignon, Hennessy and many more. I am fascinated with their brands even though I am not their regular customer. But there is one product I sometime indulge myself to when the occasion arises and that is a bottle of Moët & Chandon.

In March 2009, Moët became the first champagne house to introduce a Hollywood celebrity ambassador when they announced that Scarlett Johansson would be the face for their new campaign. Moët has been the official champagne of the Golden globe for over two decades and it was also the official champagne of the 2009 Oscars so the connection is obvious. I like their strategy. For decades stars have successfully promoted luxurious watches, expensive cars and quality cosmetics. So when I think about it, it seems logical to use the same strategy for exquisite champagne.

This is the most commonly seen photo of Scarlett promoting Moët. She definitely looks stunning and the photo is great. I am not sure if this is the best photo to capture the celebration when you drink Moët, I will let you decide. But Scarlett my dear, this is no way to treat a bottle of fine champagne, you pour it into a glass you silly girl.

In John De Bello’s classic movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” from 1978 a voice on the radio is advertising beer: “Schmidt – Because you’re never too drunk to ask for more!”

In a sense this joke captures the essence of why companies care about brands.

When you have a strong brand, your customers can

• Discover you
• Recommend you to others
• Ask for more

In fact, as we mentioned in an earlier post, the first ever registered trademark in Britain was for a beer brand: The Bass Ale Red Triangle. Registering the Red Triangle provided the brand with legal protection. Bass knew that if customers would see the Bass Red Triangle on any pub sign or bottle of beer, that triangle was in effect the company’s promise of a certain experience for the customer.

These days it’s not just signs on pubs and labels on beer bottles. And it’s not just the logo. To apply a brand today a company needs a way to consistently apply any part of their identity wherever their audience is. This could be a logo on a coffee mug, a template for a PowerPoint presentation or animations for digital banners. Or even a radio commercial in a remake of a classic B-movie.

After the collapse of the Icelandic financial system it was vital to restructure the country’s banks quickly to maintain basic banking services. New banks emerged from the old ones, and over the next couple of months they should be able to function like business as usual. But will they be able to grow? If the publicly owned banks ever plan on getting new investors and rebuild their reputation, it is essential that they build a brand from scratch. Let’s take Kaupthing as an example; the bank was alleged to have lent millions to its owners. It was one of the fastest growing banks in the world and over night the bank – and the brand – was ruined.

Kaupthing Bank is now known as The New Kaupthing bank. I’m not sure that the connection with the old brand is a good idea, because you immediately associate it with something bad. But there is an opportunity in every problem. This might be the time for ad or branding agencies to show what they are made of. If they are able to help make a brand that regains the trust of customers and lenders, they might even save the Icelandic banking system.

They say your brand is your company’s most valuable asset. If that is true, Kaupthing, or the other Icelandic banks for that matter, aren’t worth a lot. But with a solid branding strategy there might be hope for them yet.

I believe our app, Brand Capital, will be beneficial to banks, local and global. It might not save the Kaupthing brand, but that is not our intention. With Brand Capital our ultimate goal is to increase brand consistency and reliability by making your brand available to those who have anything to do with brand implementation and thereby make sure that when a new, redesigned brand rises from the ashes, it is used to its full potential in every aspect of a business.

It’s not a secret, I like beer.

There are some brilliant branding to be found on beer bottles and this post from NeatOrama has some gems I was unaware of:

Alfred Henry (Freddy) Heineken, the grandson of the founder of the company, Gerard Heineken, helped develop the company’s own typeface. He insisted that the ‘e’ in the logo should look friendlier.

Bass Pale Ale’s Red Triangle logo is the very first trademark registered in Britain.

Also first signs of product placement: Bass is also the most frequently featured beer in fine arts. Bottles of Bass beer can be seen in Manet’s 1882 painting Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

I like this one as it seems to be the result of communication breakdown between copywriters and designers:

According to James Tito, the former CEO of Latrobe Brewing, the number ’33′ may actually be an accident. When the founders of the company came up with the slogan

Rolling Rock – From the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe, we
tender this premium beer for your enjoyment as a tribute to
your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you.

someone wrote ’33′ at the end to indicate the number of words, but the bottle printer mistakenly incorporated it into the label graphic. They decided to keep the 33 instead of having to scrap and replace the bottles

Read the full post including interesting bits about Guinness, Stella Artois and more…