I thought this wast a joke, evidently not. Actually a series of images with the new upper case “A”, lower case “ol” and a dot. I guess that “com” thingie is not that cool anymore, just the period. And to be sure the iconic topographic image is passé they are coming out with six equally silly logos. I guess the brand consultants smell a breakthrough, dozens of new “innovative” cartoonish swooshes instead of a pure symbol. How come I don’t see 50 floppy disks with “Aol. .IN.side” or something? The press release and rest of the logos – Silicon Insider – AOL Unveils New Brand, New Logos.
The golden fish would have been nice if the dot was actually the eye. And what is that in the middle of the second row? Is there a color consultant with Wolff Olins? OK, deliberately fluorescent range. Ugly is the new beautiful.
I have to confess though, I like the dot at the end, there is something fresh about this. Perhaps a logo is redefined in front of our eyes. In the age of cascading visual stimuli a single image feels confining. The underlying idea of a theme instead of a traditional icon is the breakthrough we have been waiting for. Just to complete the theme they should add one with the middle finger! Now can we have a sound to go with the logos, I miss the dial-up modem static and the busy signals…
Faris Yakob writes in Brands as Modern Myths about the quote:
“…he is conflating myths here with lies, and he knows it – because later on in the article he says: ‘this isn’t to say stories aren’t important’ and ‘it’s still storytelling – just done differently’.”
Faris piles on:
Duckworth points out, “brands enable us to make sense and create meanings for ourselves in the socia world of consumption in which we participate.”
Right… and what is the definition myth? …My point exactly. Speaking of ads and myths, what happened to the good old ads like this 1968 one from the American Airlines? ►►►read more
The most successful business ideas repackage and remarket back to people what they already have (there is actually even a step up from that, I will speak/ write about this in the future, it doesn’t even need an inventory). Enter the New York tap water Tap’d NY created and bottled at a tap near you by Craig Zucker. Packaged and sold back to you at a dsicosut to the “spring” waters. Turns out it was all about the convenience of a bottle, but we knew it… Plus the amount of free publicity Zucker gets is insane – free TV, press, etc. Literally millions $ worth of ad time.
To follow up on my several posts in anticipation of the book, what can I say about a book that has a surprisingly profound list of the forty chapters? The individual chapters of the book grew out of Hugh’s posts. This is strength and a weakness. It’s strength because every chapter stands on its own like a book. It’s somewhat of weakness because there is little connection in the flow of the book. Similarly the classic cartoons are amazing, and Hugh is proud to publish them, but often there is little context between the chosen cartoons and the text.
There is a certain grimness to the book and I happen to like. It’s a highly personal tale about the urban loneliness and dislocation, the cruelty of the corporate game, the struggle for your own voice, art as the last frontier of the battle for purpose, sovereignty and meaning. All chapters resonated with me strongly and I wish there was a book club where we could talk about one chapter at a time, something like comments to a post. It feels that the quotable cartoonish power is just an opening to a life defining conversations.
There was one note missing for me from the book. Hugh describes unforgiving corporate grind but he never writes about the innate social skills. This seems such a big part of that game.
This is a kind of book you wish you read when you were twenty, but alas so is out fate, we don’t understand any of that before we absorb all the bumps and the bruises we are now advised to avoid. It’s a cliché to say that we live in a rapidly changing world. There is certain appetite on the street for the new ethos. We feel that traditional old preaching didn’t work at best or was actually outright deceiving. There is an insatiable market for the new contrarian voices and I can’t think of better book to satiate this hunger and still remain intimately focused on you.
I am getting all the invitations on Facebook to become a fan of different web sites. OK, I admit I have some friends of Facebook I don’t really know. Hey, it’s a grand mixer dance and I certainly would like to know a little better each of my Facebook or Twitter friends and followers. Sending me invitations to become a fan of this or that page is not a way to become friendlier or to get any attention to the web sites. The only way is to get to know the other person and she/he will become your fan without an invitation. Sending fan invitations to the entire list is not a proper method of winning friends or influencing people. Look up Fanaticism, it s an emotion. I know there is a cultural devaluation of terms like love, hate, etc., but can someone get emotional about a digital invite?
In fact I know this from running blogs for many years. People who will comment and read your blog regularly are the same people you have a human connection with. Words are cheap, human connections are precious. For a person to become a fan of anything she/he must become emotionally involved with you as a human being. Frankly that’s why people like to follow celebrities so much. The obvious marketing Holy Grail is that a celebrity is a brand with whom we have an emotional bond. It might be that we vicariously lived the life of an actor in a movie; it might be that we had an intense experience imagining shooting that last second three pointer at the end of a game seven, whatever. But we feel like we know this person on a visceral, meaningful, human level.
So people will read, watch or become a fan of your work if they are interested in you as a human being, what you actually say comes at a distant second. First I created a myth and then I created an art.
Thomas Stothard, Diagrams of book-shelves in the Royal Academy of Arts Library: Bays X & Y, 1814-18?
Seth Godin asks is marketing an art or a science? He naturally concludes it’s both and suggests that: “We need hats. The hat of the scientist and the hat of the artist. You can only wear one hat at a time, which is why I didn’t suggest that we need gloves. Figure out what sort of marketing you’re going to do today and go do that.”
Renaissance is known as the high time for art. Yet the art was based on the discoveries and the science of the perspective drawing. Philosophers still argue, what was first the idea of a “point of view” of the artistic illustrations. But no one represents the blurred lines between sciences and arts as much as the high priest of the Renaissance Leonardo. Fast-forward to quantum physics, the high achievement of the modern science, also a profound art, the products of intense abstractions and imagination.
I had a conversation with a friend about our disciplined Eastern European concept of art, while in the west art is a “state of mind”. Perhaps we need to revisit the labels instead of trying to classify our multidimensional creativity. Even Doug Bowman who left Google because they were crunching design, still would agree that in the end it’s all about methodology not about the demarcation between arts are sciences.
Image license courtesy Royal Academy of Arts
