CEO No!

I wasn't going to comment on the new Yahoo! logo until I read this headline in Ad Age.

Wow, she worked a whole weekend on it!

No wonder it looks like it came right out of the 1980s.

Ms. Mayer, you are the CEO of a company that some say is worth $25 billion. Do you really think the best use of your time is playing with Illustrator? Every designer in America had to cringe when they read this quote:

"On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator. I think it's one of the most incredible software packages ever made. I'm not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :) So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team."

Well, at least she was right about one thing. Based on the result of this project, she is dangerous.

What is it with CEOs and their belief that there is no subject they are not expert in? Are they given a subliminal messaging tape in business school to play while they sleep that says, "You know everything about everything" on an infinite loop?

Here's a tip for CEOs everywhere.

Unless you went to RISD, CCS, Pratt or Art Center, leave the design work to the professionals.

I'm not saying you can't have an opinion, but believe it or not great designers aren't a dime a dozen. Designing a logo isn't as easy as powering up a Mac and opening Illustrator, even though the best designers often make it look that way.

Design matters as much as anything in business. Would you "roll up your sleeves" with your lawyers and help them file your patent applications? Would you dive into the trenches with your software engineers and help them write code?

If the answer is yes, you're going to have a hell of a time getting good people to work for you.

Do your job and let other people do theirs. You'll be surprised at how much better that works for everyone.

Features do not differentiate brands

As product developers, we are obsessed with features. What can we add to our product and service to make sure we have everything the customer wants and needs – even those features they never knew they needed until we added them?

Features are great. Features are important. Features lead to benefits. Without relevant features there's no reason for anyone to buy our products.

But features do not differentiate brands.

You can get adaptive cruise control on a $25,000 Ford Fusion and a $205,000 Bentley Flying Spur.

You can get vibrating bristles on a $4 Oral-B toothbrush and a $100 Sonicare.

You can get a 15-inch HD display, Intel i7 processor and 500 GB of storage on a $1,300 HP Spectre and a $2,800 MacBook Pro.

The difference isn't the feature. It's in how each brand executes that feature. It's in the design, the materials, the experience, the positioning.

When Volvo touts its all-wheel drive system, it does so by saying that it makes you safer.

When BMW promotes all-wheel drive, it does so by saying it improves driving performance.

Features do not differentiate brands.

Brands differentiate features.

The best of the web

One of the beautiful things about the web, is that amid all the dreck there are gems.

Not every blog is about how to enhance your social media presence or five ways to increase traffic to your site. 

Not every app is juvenile game designed to distract you from the important things that are happening in the world around you. 

And not every video is a 15-year old girl showing you the uh-may-zing top she got for cheap on her latest trip to the mall, or some pseudo-celebrity's masturbatory exercise in self-exploitation.

Sometimes you find things like this and you can just take pleasure the talents, passion and craftsmanship of the subject and the filmmaker.

Shaped on all Six Sides from New Canada on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Yesterday's news

The next couple of days are jam packed here at OBX Thinking's global command center, so rather than letting the blog lay idle for a couple of days I'll be reposting content from a few years ago. Today, we revisit the evolution of obsolescence.

In the 1950s designer Brooks Stevens coined the term "Planned Obsolescence" to describe the fundamental underpinning of our burgeoning consumer economy. Companies were deliberately designing their products in such a way that within a few years – thanks to ephemeral style, technology or performance – people would be forced to buy new stuff on a regular basis.

My, how things have changed.

We've gone from a time when companies felt they had to design obsolescence into their products in order to guarantee future sales, to one where global competition is so intense that people are afraid to buy the latest computer, cell phone, car or fashion item for fear that it will be out of date by the time they get it home.



We're living in the era of "Forced Obsolescence." No one has the luxury of allowing products to become obsolete on their own timetable. The competition will do that for you.

If this had been the '50s, Apple would have launched the iPad and milked that platform for a few years before making significant investments in changing it. Instead they knew that competitors would quickly enter the marketplace and the iPad 2 was launched with more features, more functionality and an improved design for the same price less than a year later.

Apple knows, and hopefully your company does too, that today you have to eat your own young before the competition does it for you.

The birth of cool

I saw this headline in the New York Times yesterday and have spent a little time thinking about what it means and why it's true.

Samsung is cool not because they have cool ads. Not because their products look cool. Certainly not because of the blazer their EVP is wearing in the picture.

Samsung is cool for the same reason Apple is cool.

They're both great at what they do.

Cool is not about what you say, how you act, or how many black mock turtlenecks you have.

Cool is about excellence.

Miles Davis wouldn't have been cool if he weren't a supremely talented, incredibly innovative trumpet player.

Steve McQueen wouldn't have been cool if he weren't a gifted actor.

Apple wouldn't have been cool had their products not worked so damn well.

Companies need to stop focusing on being cool and start trying to be great. Once you've achieved greatness, cool will come.

Florida and its manufactured identity crisis

The Gap. Starbucks. Best Buy. American Airlines. Kraft. They've all been criticized for recent logo redesigns.

So is it any surprise that when Enterprise Florida, the group charged with promoting business in the state, unveiled this new logo, controversy ensued.

Why?

You guessed it.

The necktie is of course more commonly associated with businessMEN than businessWOMEN thus the logo is sexist.

Now, if you subscribe to the theory that any publicity is good publicity, then this is a stroke of genius. The "sexist logo" story has been picked up by every business newspaper, website and television network, allowing Enterprise Florida to reinforce facts like the state ranks 4th in the nation in the number of women-owned businesses.

I'm not a woman and I rarely wear a tie, so I don't pretend to know how this logo makes female business owners feel. But I do know this after 30 years of helping companies develop their brands and establish identities: if you unveil a new logo, someone is going to hate it.

You might as well be prepared to use the controversy to help build your brand. Whether by luck or design, the marketing people at Enterprise Florida are doing just that.

Oh, just for the record, I hate this logo. Not because I think it's sexist, but because it's ugly.

Logos are meaningless

I'm tapping into the archives this Friday. I figure a posting a rerun every once in while can't hurt, based on how many people still watch Seinfeld and M*A*S*H.

Your logo doesn't mean anything until you make it mean something.

Nike's logo didn't mean athletic performance before Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan and others put the shoes on their feet and started appearing in their commercials.

Apple's logo didn't stand for intuitive computing until the products they put it on delivered on that promise.

BMW's badge didn't stand for the ultimate driving machine until the products underneath them proved themselves on the track and on the street.

Your logo only becomes meaningful through your products, your actions and your communications.

Don't worry too much about what your new logo means. Worry more about how you're going to make it meaningful.

Changing the Chanel

Apparently if you want to generate millions of views on youtube all you have to do is pay Brad Pitt seven million dollars, put him in front of a mottled background, shoot him in black and white with a light source that changes for no apparent reason and have him recite some middle-school quality free verse.



Just in case you missed it while lost in Mr. Pitt's oh so dreamy eyes, here's the copy:

It's not a journey. Every journey ends but we go on.
The world turns and we turn with it.
Plans disappear.
Dreams take over.
But wherever I go, there you are;
My luck, my fate, my fortune.
Chanel Number 5
Inevitable.

Yes, I guess it is inevitable.

Why go to all the effort of creating interesting films that leave a lasting impression on your brand when you can hire a famous mimbo, shoot him on video in a couple of hours, go have lunch at Musso and Frank and still generate well over two million views and a tidal wave of PR in just a few days?

I get it. We're talking about scented liquid here, a product with no news. They had to manufacture it. Mission accomplished.

As a marketer, I stand and applaud. They've gotten the world to lift their heads up long enough to acknowledge that Chanel still exists for this holiday season.

As someone who has enjoyed the brand's willingness to hire artists like Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Baz Luhrmann, Ridley Scott and others to create interesting, beautiful, obtuse and memorable films, I'm a little sad.

Emotion by design

If you ignore the power of design in the development of your products and services, be prepared for people to ignore your products and services.

Design elevates what you are selling from a functional need to an emotional desire.

When something connects emotionally, it's hard to quit.

MySpace? Not yet.

After being bought by Rupert Murdoch for $580 million who watched it wither under his ownership and then sold to an investment group that includes Justin Timberlake for $35 million, there is soon to be a new MySpace.

I'm not sure how worried the folks at Facebook are or should be.

Built around the social aspects of music, art and entertainment, the new MySpace feels much more visual than Facebook and has a hook that could attract those who are looking for their social media to do more than just serve as a connection point for friends.

It's well designed, filled with content and, based on this intro video, provides an interesting user experience.



But is all this energy enough to overcome inertia?

Is there enough in the content and experience on MySpace to make it worth creating (or in my case reactivating) another social profile and spending time and energy there?

The best parties are not about the decor, the food, the entertainment or the location. They're about the people. So unless my friends migrate over to MySpace, I'll stay with Facebook's ugly and awkward interface and hope they improve other aspects of the experience over time.

MySpace might build a nice business by attracting people who are just coming into the social space, but if they've built their business plan on a mass migration of Facebook users, they might be looking for another buyer a few years from now.

Life imitates advertising

The world of news has changed. Newspapers can no longer survive just delivering papers to your home on a daily basis. They've had to expand to multiple media platforms and cultivate reader engagement to ensure advertisers will find enough value to continue to subsidize their content.

So how do you explain the complex world of new journalism in a TV spot? Use a parable.



It's an interesting concept and one that resonates especially today given the way the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman and Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law have become news since the shooting in late February.

Wearing the brand

Logos are powerful. They are a symbol for everything your company stands for. They are a vessel for your company's mission, vision, values and attributes. 

Maybe that's why creating a new logo is so damn hard.

The process is fraught with pitfalls and roadblocks as everyone from the summer intern to the chairman's wife has an opinion on what it should look like.

While there's no fool-proof method for creating a great logo, I can offer these three pieces of advice before you get started.

1. Know what your company stands for
2. Hire a great designer
3. Keep the approval team small

While you don't want a thousand voices guiding the process, when it comes to selecting the winning design from two or three finalists, it's important to have a logo your employees and partners are proud of.

How do you tease that out?

Rather than just asking them which they like, spend a few bucks and put the logos on a t-shirt or hat. Then tell them they have to pick one to wear over the weekend. This takes it from being a rational exercise to an emotional one. If they know their friends are going to see them wearing the logo, they'll start to think about how it makes them feel.

If they're forced to wear it out in public, there's a pretty good chance the one they pick will be the one that makes them feel the proudest. And, if your logo can do that, you have a good one.

Thinning the herd

Obesity is a health problem in the U.S. But for cities and states who have to pay for the effects of obesity through increased health care costs, it's an economic one. Thus, we're seeing a rash of new campaigns designed to scare people into eating less.

This effort from New York City is drawing criticism because it's "graphic" use of an amputee to demonstrate the effects of type 2 diabetes that results from eating too many super-sized fast food meals.

I don't really have a problem with the image. It's more with the strategy and tone. 

Yes, sometimes in order to get people to see the truly destructive nature of their behavior we have to have an intervention. But usually those are held in private with a few close friends and family members shining a light on the ugly truth of one's life.

Public shaming rarely has positive social effects.

My other issue is with the ham-handed copywriting and artless design.

Some may compare this to the "Truth" anti-smoking campaign that used much more graphic images and has been effective at keeping kids from starting to smoke, but there's one key difference.

In this ad, you're the bad guy. You made the choice to eat and drink to much. In the Truth campaign, the Tobacco companies are the target. Having a "devil" tempting you makes it easier rationalize walking away from something you desire.

Obesity is a public health and economic problem that needs to be dealt with. This is just the wrong way to go about it.