Identity Crisis

I just had a call from a long-time client. He has been with us for a few years, knows our philosophies on brand development, and is a former Fortune 100 sales manager. All of that makes his call even less explicable. In short, he should know better

We've worked for a couple of years on establishing his sports training brand. The name and logo are solid. In his market segment, his brand is known, identifiable, and well-respected. He has branched out from the service industry that was his core business into some other consumer products bearing the same logo and identity. They have all been successful, mostly because they piggybacked on the success of the original brand application.

Today, he says he wants to launch a clothing line. The clothing is specialized and would be marketed to the existing market. Instead of using the established brand and identity, he want's to call it simply "B."

"B?"

"Yes. B."

"Well, that's great, but why?" I asked.

"I just think it would be cool," he replied happily. No, giddily.

"What about the brand you already have? The one that everyone knows?"

"I don't know. I just like 'B'."

I like B, too. It is one of my favorite letters. It is NOT, however, my favorite choice for a clothing line targeted at an existing customer base that identifies with the existing brand. Could it work? Yeah. It could. But, the question isn't whether it will work but rather if it will be a greater success to tie the clothing line to the well-established, well-respected brand that the client has worked years to craft. The customer base would be a simple hand off from one part of the brand family to another. Simple. No mess. No real effort.

The closest equivalent to what he is thinking would be this. Back when Nike made only shoes (yes, they really did make JUST shoes at one point), they thought it would be a good plan to start selling other products, too. Shirts, socks, hats, even lacrosse sticks. Did they start a whole new company called "N" to sell this stuff? Nope. They just stuck their logo on other products. You see the same thing with Remington--guns and hunting clothes. Under Armour--shirts, to start with, now everything you can imagine.

I can see it in a specialized situation. Royal Robbin made durable pants for the mountain climbing community. Great pants, but it's a very small community, indeed. Someone saw the great stuff and bought the company, decided that the cool-looking pants that were designed for climbing the toughest mountains (class 5, category 11) would look equally cool on other daring men and women. He picked the name of the trouser, 5.11, and changed the name of the company to match it. He then targeted a whole NEW market--law enforcement and paramilitary--and now 5.11 is one of the biggest names in the tactical world.

But that's really a horse of a different color. It's chasing a new market--totally different from the original one--with an existing product. It's NOT going after an existing market with a new product.

We could certainly start a new campaign that would launch a new product line. We've done that countless times with good success. And if this were a brand that had nothing to do with the established market, I'd be all for that. It would be pricey, of course, and the client is not known for his deep pockets and huge budgets, so it's not really a smart investment on his part.

It's blog-worthy simply because it is important to get clients to think logically and strategically and NOT get carried away by an idea that has no basis in business. This would be an excellent time to make a pros and cons list before placing all your bets on B. Or any other letter, really.

Split identity

There are several schools of thought with logos and identity work. One school says you should only use your logo in its whole, pure and complete format. That means never dropping it into the background of a design, screened back. No cutting it in half to use it as a design element. And, if you have a cool element in it such as a bird or machine part or face, you can't use that as a stand-alone piece. The other school of thought allows this.

What's the big deal, you ask? Well, the purists say that any use of the logo that is not complete and whole serves to dilute the brand. The idea is that the whole logo reinforces the brand while anything less than all is destructive.

That's idiotic.

If you have a logo that has useful elements in it, USE them! I've used logo bits as the symbol at the end of a story in newsletters. Very effective because it not only stops the story but it visually refers back to the whole logo. Better still, it appears frequently in a publication.

Logo elements can be used to great effect on apparel. The graphical element of a complex logo (i.e. one with a graphical element and typographical elements) can be very effective and compelling. In fact, it can be far more successful than the entire logo. Using just an element can simplify the brand presence and make it far more memorable. Think Nike. In fact, think Nike and pretty much stop there. They've done this better than anyone.

Then take a look at Starbucks.

Even Dodge Ram is a well known element...

But it's not just the big companies that can benefit from this kind of thing. Take a look at some smaller company logos. Some have local and some have national or even international reach. All are unafraid to use elements to make their graphical point.

In an era in which graphical flexibility is crucial to effectively navigating the myriad venues in which a logo might appear, it is a huge, huge, HUGE handicap to be hamstrung by the constricting rules of overly confining logo guidelines. I've worked in corporate settings with communications directors (it's always communications directors, for some reason) who are married so tightly to the logo guidelines that they can't break away from them. They act as though the logo guidelines were written in stone atop a stormy mountaintop and handed to The Administration (i.e. the communications directors themselves) by the gods. 

In truth, logo guidelines are written by people who are less designers than they are administrators themselves as a way to exert control over any new bursts of creativity that might happen in the organization. It's a remarkable duality: the creative guy makes a logo, jots down some rules, then tells other creatives that they can't be creative after that point. Granted, there can be a big difference between a good design and a well-intended but horrible design. But, that's where common sense and a good eye comes into play. You can't legislate good  taste, but you can encourage creativity.

Be creative. Break your own borders and design rules. You will find new ones that lie just out of view. That is lively, interesting and reactive design. And that's much more fun and effective than a stuffy rule book.

Blast off to identity

When you think of a product or business launch, you don't usually think of an actual launch. But, sometimes that is exactly what you might have...

We have a client who wanted a strong logo for his sports program. The name is Ballistic Lacrosse. Great name. Ballistic is a good name for a lacrosse team because the word itself conjures up so many interesting images and concepts, from trajectory to arcs to launch to attack. Plus, the word ball is hidden in there, too, which can't hurt!

The organization is a lacrosse program with several teams under the overall Ballistic banner. Each team is named after a missile. Missiles. Rockets. Blast off. You can see the brainstorming session starting already, right?

Sports logos are their own special part of the logo biz. They have to stand up to a LOT of use (and often abuse) and can appear almost anywhere. In addition to the typical marketing materials, a sports logo has to look great on jerseys and helmets, car magnets and stickers. It's a tall order but, honestly, of all logos they are the most fun to do and among the most satisfying because of the enormous range of applications. As a designer, there is nothing more exciting than seeing your work live and in person, so sports teams are particularly good for that.

So, this is what we made:

It's proven to be very popular and successful. The colors work well in the Florida environment--blue and green are commonly identified with the Sunshine State. At the same time, they avoid any association with any of the big Florida college or pro teams. 

Plus it has a plenty of fun factor. A shark-toothed missile. A blast of smoke. A great name. Kids love it. Adults think it's cool. It looks great on clothing. It was a blast (ha ha) to do!

What it does NOT do is incorporate a lacrosse stick into the design. That's not an accident. Look at most lacrosse team logos and you find the hopelessly hackneyed crossed sticks. The worst cases are clunky silhouettes crossed like swords over the team name. We wanted to avoid this at all costs. The client, however, is the kind of guy who likes nothing more than to follow what he sees as tradition. Tradition is often just a visual habit. And it's good to break a habit.