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Category: Commercials & Branding

Can you own a color?

Long story short, the answer is fairly sensible: you can't own a color per se, but you can trademark a color associated with your company for use against competitors the same way you can trademark any other imagery or words.

So, for example, I can use Cadbury purple to paint my car, or to as the color of my book store, etc., but if I try to use it selling candy, I might very well get a cease-and-desist order from the Cadbury lawyers, for fear that I might cause confusion as to whether I'm an official Cadbury candy or not.

Makes sense, remarkably enough. More sense than a lot of other related intellectual property law. #ddtb

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Can you own a color?
From Cadbury's purple to UPS' brown, companies understand the power of purchasing a particular hue

Where the Men are People and the Women are Something Else, I Guess

Men and women are a lot more alike that sometimes one might imagine. There are any number of oddball product differentiations between male / female, man / woman, boy / girl that are pandering to prejudices as to what they want (e.g., the toddler building blocks we were looking at today that had Boy and Girl editions — the former in primary colors, the latter in pastels).

Of course, there are cases where male and females of the human race are different (and viva la difference!). The problem is, too many things that are marketed "for women" are marketed for women as a special case. Like the normal, unmarked, ungender-labeled item is, well, for men (one assumes, even though men aren't explicitly mentioned), but, oh, yeah, there's a special version "for women" or "for girls." Which sometimes isn't any different except in color and decor.

Either one is presented with the conclusion that women are some special subclass of people, who are generally assumed to be men, or else there are generic versions for both men and women, but there are also versions that are women-only (because heaven forbid that men or boys have something that's lavender or pink or smells like flowers or something).

Our culture is so screwed up, sometimes. #ddtb

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Women vs. People : Ms Magazine Blog
It's time for a round-up of all the reader submissions illustrating the annoying habit of having products and products-for-women. The phenomenon illustrates the way we continue to think of men as …

The Paws Are Strong with This One

Volkswagen's Super Bowl Big Game commercial teaser.

Margie informs me that I am no longer allowed to mock my mother-in-law's "Jingle Bells Barked by Dogs" Christmas track. #ddtb

Excuse me while I go see a man about a comic book

Posting this (again) for two reasons.

1. In the promotional material provided, DC shows how the logo will be used … and some of the applications aren't bad.

2. The site author suggests it looks like a toilet seat, which it will now forever be fixed in my mind as.

My further thought: DC is trying to look like a legit publishing firm, overly corporate (though with some playful ways of using it) but still "serious". Is that a good idea? We'll see. #ddtb

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DC Women Kicking Ass – DC unveils its new brand identity
DC unveils its new brand identity The logo from last week and been officially deemed the new logo of DC Comics. I’ve worked with companies on brands and logos and it is hard work and you never really….

Vintage Travel Poster Goodness

Some lovely ones here (also some goofy ones, but what the heck). I like the one for Naples. And I hadn't known that some travel promoter had dubbed Catalina Is. the "Riviera of the Pacific." #ddtb

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37 Vintage Travel Posters From the Library of Congress – Mental Floss
37 Vintage Travel Posters From the Library of Congress

This, THIS is the new DC logo?

I've seen business office product logos with more personality.

While I wasn't swept off my feet when the logo last changed (https://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2005/08/07/bt05_this_rest.html) in 2005, it was an evolutionary change, and reflected something … well, kind of exciting and bold and comic booky.

This … is about as dynamic as … um … something that isn't very dynamic. Or exciting.

I'm hoping that the main focus will be on internal corporate / high level communications. But given the wide array of uses it was applied for, and that it was both listed for DC Entertainment and DC Comics … I don't hold out a lot of hope. #ddtb

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DC Comics New Logo Revealed | ComicBook.com
DC Comics has applied for a trademark for a brand new logo. The Beat uncovered the application for the trademark on The United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website. The new DC Comics logo show…

This is what happens when you don't have a Tourism Board budget

At least I hope that's what happened in this truly awful tourism ad from the great state of North Dakota. I mean, I'm a desperately uncool guy and I could come up with something more cool than this. #ddtb

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North Dakota tries to be cool, fails – Boing Boing

Ooo-ooh, I read this through the grapevine … er, the Internet

#ddtb

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What the Sun-Maid Raisin Girl Really Looked Like – Mental Floss
What the Sun-Maid Raisin Girl Really Looked Like

"Adverts in the stream / That is what they are …"

If not a compelling reason to switch to Plus, then a reason to switch away from Facebook.

Google is in the advertisement business, no question. But they tend to frame that in terms of "How can we maintain a useful experience for people using us, while still making money?" Whereas Facebook's approach is, "How can we make the most money while making it tougher for people to stop using us?" #ddtb

Reshared post from +Les Jenkins

One more reason to switch to Google+: No ads.

Though I suspect we'll see some eventually. Even so, Google's ads in other servers like Search and Gmail tend to be surprisingly unobtrusive compared to many other places on the web. #google+ #Facebook #Advertising

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Hot for 2012: Facebook Ads in Your News Feed! [Facebook]
Ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads. We love ads. Ads ads ads ads. Facebook ads. Give us more ads! We want ads! What's wrong with Facebook? Not enough ads! More ads? Phew!
TechCrunch, citing an anonymous Facebook ad bro, says Zuckerberg's Like empire will soon start dropping advertisements in your news feed, which hitherto this point has been sacred ground. But in 2012, the place you once trusted as an untainted source of keg pics and meme links will be festooned with one …

More on the New HP Logo that Isn't

HP now says, no, that was all just design proposals, some of which have been adopted, but not the logo change.

On the one hand, glad to see that HP realizes the equity it has in its current, quite serviceable log. On the other hand (while it may not be their fault that mistaken word of a logo change got out), it sure feels like yet another flip-flop from the flip-floppingest hi-tech company out there.

Oh, well. Best conclusion, IMO. #ddtb

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Follow-Up: HP – Brand New

Because what HP needs to get away from its mismanagement is a new crappy logo

Really. After the whole debacle of "we're getting rid of selling PCs" / "no, we're not", is a new logo — and one that takes minimalism to new minimal lengths — what Hewlett-Packard needs? I think not. #ddtb

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A New HP: So Close, Yet So Far Away – Brand New

OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY!

In my experience, most network and cable networks do a decent job of load-balancing the volume between shows and commercials. The biggest disconnects seem to be where a local station is inserting locally purchased commercials.

Of course, most TV we watch is via DVR, and we just 30-second-advance through the commercials … #ddtb

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FCC to ban loud TV commercials today
The Federal Communications Commission will pass regulations today to limit the volume levels of TV commercials and penalize broadcasters that bombard consumers with loud ads between televised shows an…

Sneaking around Do Not Call

I find it fascinating that (a) all the fine consumer-oriented reasons given by the proponents of the bill for its passage are all services that people can already opt into as they please (e.g., air flight delay notifications, and (b) the folks who are pushing this bill:

"Supporters of the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Air Transport Association, as well as groups that represent bankers, mortgage lenders, college loan programs and debt collectors."

Hmmmm. Nobody there who I think is actually looking after my best interest. #ddtb

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Bottom Line – Bill would permit robo-calls to your cell phone

If you like getting those automated messages on your home phone, then you’re just going to love a proposal in Congress. The bill (H.R.

Airbrushing? Old School. Photoshopping? So Last Year

The hot new trend in fashion modeling is … virtual bodies. I.e., design some sort of ideal computer body, paste on a real fashion model head (to avoid the Uncanny Valley), and cut and paste your clothes on them.

I'm not sure it is any worse than the above, but is one more step away from reality-based fashion. #ddtb

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H&M Puts Real Model Heads On Fake Bodies
The bodies of most of the models H&M features on its website are computer-generated and "completely virtual," the company has admitted. H&M designs a body that can better display clo…

StumbleUpon logo changes

And a thousand social sharing plug-ins scream and scramble to update their IMG files. #ddtb

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StumbleUpon Stumbles on Hidden Shape – Brand New

Brand Name Nostalgia

Some of these were "OMG, I haven't thought about that in years." Others were, "OMG, they've been out of business for all these years?" #ddtb

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10 Brand Names Gone, But Not Forgotten – TheStreet
Nostalgia may help resurrect popular brand names that have faded away.

That's when I started having my drinking problem

… as they put it in Airplane. That said, these pix are just … odd. Is the idea one of abundance (thus waste)? Or some wildly sexy clumsiness? Or people using bottled water instead of a napkin? Or …? #ddtb

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Women Struggling to Drink Water
The internet LOLed in January about a collection of stock photographs, put together at Hairpin, featuring women laughing alone with salad. Stock photographs are pictures made available by photographers for a fee. Any marketer or web designer who doesn’t want or can’t afford to hire a photographer for their specific project can just use a stock photo. The supply of stock photos, then, can sometimes tell us something funny about our cultural milieu. See also mocking stock photography.
I argued …

Unblogged Bits (Tue. 25-Oct-11 1130)

Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….

  1. What people do when it snows – Bah! It’s usually Twitter, unless I decided to upload a picture to Flickr …
  2. Market Instability and the Plight of the Rich by David Atkins – Eek! The ultra-mega-rich are sometimes dropping down into being only mega-rich because they own so much on the stock market! Sometime they even have to sell their private jets! Weep, my nation!
  3. High-speed videography reveals how mosquitoes fly in the rain [Video] – Fascinating.
  4. Science proves that getting silicone injected directly into your body is a bad idea [Plastic Surgery] – “If you really, really want cosmetic surgery, don’t get it done on the cheap.” Words to (literally) live by.
  5. Thermostat Automagically Learns Your Heating Habits [Video] – Cool! And … um, warm! No, I’m all in favor of inductive learning by devices, vs deductive rules that users have to key in (and, often, don’t).
  6. Jan Eberly: Is Regulatory Uncertainty a Major Impediment to Job Growth? NO! – Don’t get your facts in the way of my talking point!
  7. Warner Bros Steals A Move From Disney, Will Pull ‘Harry Potter’ DVDs Out Of Circulation December 29 – Warner Bros doesn’t consider there is an active market in used DVDs out there. And I don’t think they are going to have the Disneyesque patience to restrict availability in the vault for that long.
  8. Slaughtering horses for meat is banned in the U.S. Why? – Slate Magazine – I don’t think I’ve ever eaten horse meat, but I don’t think I could muster a reason not to given the other critters I’m willing (and often eager) to consume.
  9. Del Taco – I’m not a fan of the “before” logo, but the “after” one strikes me as anything but an improvement.
  10. Thanks to anti-vaxers like Jenny McCarthy, measles outbreaks on the increase. – Dolts. Idiots. And, potentially, killers.
  11. Our Tax Money Funds A Government Surveillance Center In Lower Manhattan — And Wall Street Is Part of It. Why? – Best city government money can buy!
  12. Northern lights go way, way south – Hmmm … thinking we should be able to see this, maybe, from the Denver area (except for the city lights).
  13. Rick Green: Drug-sniffing dogs come to Wolcott High School, with a twist. – Hartford Courant – Endless weasel-words here from the superintendent, all of which boil down to, “We thought lying to the kids in a scary way was a cool idea, no harm, no foul.” Great lesson plan.
  14. Officials use ruse at high school to clear halls for drug search – Actually, a valuable lesson served up to the kids here: some authorities will, in fact, lie to you and play on your fears in order to get away with what they want. Not a nice message, but a useful one. Of course, now I expect to hear about some kid being hurt in a real intruder incident because they thought it was just more administration drug-searching bullshit.
  15. HOWTO take over your neighbor’s stereo: Cory Doctorow
  16. Gatwick airport took away my belt buckle: “I stick to what they’ve told me. I’m not going to speak to you anymore. Not if you’re going to publish it. I’m not speaking to you.” – Security Theater: It’s not just an American production.
  17. NPR finds GOP Sen. Marco Rubio misinforming about his family history again: John Aravosis (DC)
  18. Consumers shifting money from big banks – It would be nice were it so. I suspect there will be a substantial bump, but not enough to change the big banks’ behavior (except, perhaps, to “force” them to raise fees further because of some loss of business).

Iconography from the past

Ever notice something about those “As Seen on TV” blurbs and graphics?

As Seen on TV!

See the curved edges?  The slightly bulbous shape?

Here's another one!

What does that mean?  Why?

As Seen on TV!

And that’s because …

Once upon a time in America ... this was a TV

I’m sure there was a good reason for the curved edges.  But that’s what we had.  Until about, oh, a few years ago, that’s what all TVs looked like.  Now …

This is what TV looks like now

In 2010, 2/3 of American households had an HDTV.  That proportion continues to climb more each year.

So when will those little “As Seen on TV” logos turn into a 16:9 box?

Maybe once phone icons stop looking like this ...
... or this ...
... or even this.

Iconography lasts longer than what it’s an icon of.  I think it will take a while for “As Seen on TV” to change its shape.

Just Skidding!

I’m not sure whether this is, in fact, The Most Sexist Commercial of All Time … but it sure makes me want to punch an ad exec in the face (and I’m not even a woman).

“That pore little woman! So confused by all those bright lights and scary signs and swooshing cars! Thank goodness she has Goodyear Polyglass Radial Tires, otherwise, she’d die before she could get to the airport and let her husband drive her home!”

(via Holy Kaw)