There must be something in the water. The great state of Wisconsin has a new tourism slogan “Live Like You Mean It” and the SciFi Channel is changing it’s name to SyFy.
I can imagine these meetings: “We need new energy! We need a new brochure…no…a new SLOGAN!…a new NAME!!” Imagine broad sweeping arm gestures accompanying that sentence as if the speaker were expanding her arms to embrace the entire expanse of her new empire.
Both these moves are classic branding mistakes. A slogan is not a brand, it should sum up what’s already there. Otherwise don’t bother. The best take on this was in the book “Cutting Edge Advertising” where the authors advised, if it’s not as good as “Just Do It”, don’t. Especially don’t if the slogan’s been beaten like a rented mule.
In regards to Sci Fi’s name change, Bonnie Hammer, former president of Sci Fi is quoted in the New York Times, “We couldn’t own Sci Fi; it’s a genre. But we can own Syfy.”
Let me ask everyone who watches Sci Fi, do you care if the channel can own it’s name? I sure as hell don’t. What does that have to do with the quality of your programming? When I thought of T.V. and science fiction, I thought of Sci Fi. Now I’ll cringe every time I linger there.
What’s even more surprising about the Sci Fi name change is that their audience is one of the most cynical and dismissive of this kind of chicanery. These are the people who will point out plot holes in comic book story lines from decades ago and you’re going to try to jam brand-speak down their throats? Why don’t you see if the folks over at D.C. Comics can get Batman into therapy and get a cheerier disposition. Because, you know, women from 18-35 think he’s too negative.
It’s all ridiculous. It’s like giving yourself a nickname and insisting everyone else use it. People either think you’re nuts or arrogant. The internet exposes these flimsy excuses for real branding as weak and inauthentic. Just stop. Please.
Just added the ShareThis button to all news and events on www.bus.wisc.edu. Now site visitors, faculty, staff…whoever…can crow about their accomplishments and upcoming events on any number of social networking tools.
In the spirit of “it’s not a problem until it’s a problem,” I’ll now get to work on how to measure the results of this tweak.
Wish me luck.
I find that writing with my thumbs is tedious. Do people really use this for extended periods of time?
The autocomplete seems to help quite a bit, but even still I think people are going to need some sort of thumb therapy in about 10 years.
Web Design From Scratch offers a great high level view of designing a site. Here’s the skinny:
I encourage everyone to re-read this article before every project (myself included).
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of 37signals‘ approach to application and Web design. There’s something about their approach that is exceptionally clear and easy to use.
Not too long ago, I found a blog post on their site that reveals the secret: patterns.
I encourage you to give the article a read and refer to it the next time you need to bring clarity to a collection of seemingly disparate information.
Jakob Nielsen analyzes four sites for usability in his April 14 column Four Bad Designs.
“Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages… which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money.”
Ouch.
Let me know what you think. Nielsen is a polarizing figure for Web designers, so I hope we can have some good discussion.
Social media and social networking sites offer new opportunities for organizations to publish content and interact with their customers. So just what the heck is Facebook? Why would I upload video to YouTube? Who stole the “e” from Flickr? Answers to these questions and more in this post. Read More
Everyone’s a designer now
Whether you like it or not, you’re a graphic designer. In Why aren’t you (really) good at graphic design?, Seth Godin reminds us that this is a new truth in business. Every day people people in all walks of life throw bad clip art into their PowerPoint slides. They write memos using only 14 pt comic sans. Their email signatures contain an image of their favorite Disney character.
Please stop.
If you read Seth’s post, he provides a link to some great resources to learn the very basic graphic design skills that will keep you from embarrassing yourself and your company. Learn to design, it is now a basic business skill.
Somewhat related: ever notice that most people who say “I’m a visual person” can’t draw a lick. I think this is code for “I can’t articulate what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it. However, I will not pay for the dozens of revisions I’ll ask you to do.” I think that’s a topic for another time.