Valleywag: Branding

A good place for a Yahoo-less Microsoft to start: Pick a brand and stick to it

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:00:00 PDT

If buying Facebook doesn't work out, Microsoft plans to compete on the Web by growing "organically." Bill Gates said that means search advancements, more marketing and lots of meetings. Lots of meetings. But here's what those meetings ought to be about: unifying Microsoft's online branding. Check out the screenshots of Microsoft's Web designs below. Nabbed by LiveSide, ReadWriteWeb's Josh Catone points out they contain "four different search boxes, two different Live.com "orb" logos (in four different sizes), and six different header backgrounds."

Click to expand the images, which Microsoft designer Evan Malahy told LiveSide he hopes "raise awareness not only outside of Microsoft, but help us (designers) have more traction and power to get these inconsistencies addressed."

Where would you put the Wikipedia logo?

Jackson West — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:00:19 PDT

With ICQ lending its name to an Israeli toothpaste manufacturer and Google trucking branded ice cream bars to its Mountain View headquarters, no wonder Jimmy Wales is thinking about how Wikipedia can cash in on brand licensing. The only problem: Wales's marketing ideas are as dull as his sexual fantasies. Board games? Discovery Channel specials? Boring!

Wales needs to think about the special attributes he — and he alone — brings to the Wikipedia brand. Wales is becoming known as a stud to end all studs, having bedded women around the world on Wikipedia-promoting junkets. Three words: user-generated condoms. Imagine the sum of all human knowledge unrolling before her eyes. Pick the right article to put on your article, and she'll edit herself right into your history. And worry not — they're as reliable as the information in Wikipedia.

That's just the beginning. What (or whom) would you brand with the august Wikipedia logo? The 250th commenter gets a free copy of Jimmy Wales: Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture on DVD.

Xerox finds a new logo on the playground

Tim Faulkner — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:01:18 PST

Xerox is synonymous with copiers. But it urgently wants you to forget all that — and, as well, its brief, pointless stint as a "document management company." It has now joined hundreds of young, hip Internet companies with 3D glassy ball logos. Xerox hired Interbrand to spend 18 months conducting 5,000 interviews to rationalize the new logo: "friendlier" lowercase letters, a slick new typeface, and the obligatory ball, which is supposed to "suggest forward movement and 'a holistic company.'" I just think: kid's toy.

Interbrand also designed the logo to be animated, but we probably won't see the animations until Xerox's multimillion-dollar rebranding campaign is fully underway later this year. In keeping with Xerox's long-forgotten glory days, we suggest a new twist on an old idea: A children's singalong with the logo hopping from word to word. Everyone, follow the bouncing ball!

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote ...

Megan McCarthy — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:54:44 PDT

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote a blog post to explain why the server hardware maker has changed its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA, emphasizing its Java programming language and software suite. Luckily, he left comments enabled on the post, leading to gems like this: "This is a move right out of the Dilbert school of management." [Jonathan's Blog via Fake Steve]

Microsoft is allegedly demanding that startup ...

Mary Jane Irwin — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:39:28 PDT

Microsoft is allegedly demanding that startup XBux change its name to the far less hip XBucks, lest consumers be unable to distinguish between its Xbox 360 videogame console and a network that unites athletes with sponsors. Of course, we imagine Starbucks will then have grounds, as it were, to complain. [VentureBeat]

"Say my name, say my name" is Microsoft's new tune

Owen Thomas — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:17:35 PDT

Literal-minded naming is a helpful trait in a programmer. For a brand marketer, it's utter disaster. The geek-centered culture at Microsoft has produced such monstrosities as "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition For 64-Bit Extended Systems." Paging the Department of Redundancy Department! News.com explores how David Webster, a recently hired branding expert, is upping Microsoft's name game. Last year, Robert Scoble talked to Webster about how he was trying to ban supposedly "cool" codenames that didn't pop on Google searches; now, Webster's trying to advance consumer-friendly names like Silverlight, Popfly and Surface. Certainly an improvement over past atrocities like Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack — oh, wait. That's a present atrocity. Back to work, Webster.

Corporate branding gone awry

Tim Faulkner — Thu, 17 May 2007 13:13:57 PDT

TIM FAULKNER — Elinor Mills of CNET details the puke-worthy internal branding and evangelism conducted at Yahoo as proclaimed (presumably proudly) by Cammie Dunaway, chief marketing officer at the second-place search company, during her keynote speech at the Liquid Agency Brand Summit 2007.

Yahoo offers contests for the most dedicated evangelist among its 13,000 global employees [...] Employees who do things like ask people who don't work for Yahoo "Do you Yahoo?", memorize the company's mission statement and wear Yahoo gear to the office for a day can win trips paid for by the company, she says. Even visitors to Yahoo offices see purple everywhere, from the oversize, purple velvet seats in the lobbies to the purple sprinkler heads in the lawns as the company tries to embed its purple, fun image into people's consciousness.

Apparently, the monoculture of IBM is not dead. It's been Barney-fied, reborn cheesy and annoying — I mean "fun". I hope Cammie understands anyone coming up to a stranger asking, "Do you Yahoo?" is going to be turned away, if not assaulted, quicker than a purple Jehovah's witness, not perceived as "brand marketing savvy."

It's rumored that Jeff Weiner, Yahoo golden child, is even printing a Little Purple Book so that the purple masses can imprint and recite in chorus the new corporate mission statement: "To connect people to their passions, communities, and the world's knowledge... To connect people to their passions, communities, and the world's knowledge... To connect people to their passions, communities, and the world's knowledge..."