I have had the experience of the blue robot more times than I want to know. Although usually I just think what he is saying.

Usually.

One of the funniest aspects of alleged naming & branding firm Landor, is the ridiculous rationale they cite for the work they produce. Oftentimes they will, with capricious authority, justify a design based on what certain colors “mean” or “communicate”. These “reasons” become all the more comical when parroted by the officers of their most recent victim.

Landor’s latest for a financial company is a re-worked logo. Fiserve’s Chief Executive Jeffery Yabuki, performs the squawk of shame for the Journal Sentinel:

The new logo, which is the word fiserv. – with a period – is orange because it’s different from the common industry logo color of blue and “has a certain heat and energy to it, but not the kind of danger you perceive when you see red,” Yabuki said.

No red menace here.

Red bad. Red is color of Danger. Danger bad for financial company image.

Unless of course you can sell it to another financial client. From the bowels of the Landor site:

Landor created an identity and retail space for HSBC Direct. The use of white communicates the simplicity of the brand, while red projects a contemporary attitude.

Don't be alarmed, it's just HSBC Direct's Landorian luminosity.

Full Case study

Landor founder, Walter Landor gazing inappropriately at his half-son, Blandor.

Says Blandor the Imponderable: “I fondly recall Poppy and I attending the semi-annual wisdom tooth convention. As we sat on our haunches, grooming each other and eating our sack lunch of turkey biscotti and marshmallow toast, we would randomly jump up and shout, “Wottle up the bull throttle!”. We would then travel the 3 hours home, in complete silence, until our arrival at Mandible Station.”

More on the misspent journey of Blandor’s life.

Financial Advisor coaching & consulting

America Is F*cked…….(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

Via Wikipedia:

“Skippy” was first used as a trademark for peanut butter by the Rosefield Packing Co., Ltd., of Alameda, California, in 1933. Percy Crosby, creator of the “Skippy” comic strip, had the trademark invalidated in 1934, but Rosefield persisted after Crosby was committed to an insane asylum, and its successor companies, most recently Unilever, have been granted rights to the trademark over the objection of Crosby’s heirs. There has been much litigation on this point over the decades, some of which remains in progress.[1]

And from The Associated Press:

The Associated Press
Monday, April 5, 2004; 4:59 PM

ANNANDALE, Va. – For nearly 40 years Joan Crosby Tibbetts has waged a one-woman campaign against the makers of Skippy peanut butter, claiming the name was stolen from her father’s popular Depression-era comic strip.

On Monday, Tibbetts’ legal battle ended when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her suit against Skippy’s manufacturer, a division of the multinational conglomerate Unilever. But Tibbetts, 71, said she’ll continue her battle in the court of public opinion.

“This case involves a very important principle … ‘Thou shalt not steal,’” Tibbetts said Monday. “If this case is allowed to disappear and they succeed in shutting me up, who has won? These big corporations that believe they can just wear others down.”

Tibbetts’ crusade began in 1965 when the state of New York tasked her with administering her father Percy Crosby’s estate. She had not seen her father since 1939, when Crosby’s wife divorced him and took the children.

Crosby died in December 1964, after spending the last 18 years of his life in a mental hospital, his cartoon character by then largely forgotten…

Her research led her to the conclusion that the trademark for Skippy peanut butter had been improperly obtained by the Rosefield Packing Co.

She has waged her campaign ever since, a few episodes of success interspersed with endless legal wrangling and frustration.

In 1978 she won a $25,000 settlement from Bestfoods, which had purchased Skippy peanut butter from Rosefield. But Tibbetts said the settlement was with the understanding that Bestfoods would use the original Skippy character in its marketing, which never occurred.

It was also before Tibbetts found documents that she says prove Skippy’s manufacturers knowingly obtained their trademark by fraud and covered up the evidence. One document written by lawyers in 1954 as Bestfoods prepared to buy Rosefield suggested that Bestfoods’ chief counsel should deny knowledge that the Skippy mark had been fraudulently obtained.

Another victory for Tibbetts, of Annandale, Va., came in 2000 when a federal appeals court overturned a ruling that had barred Tibbetts from claiming on the Internet that she was the legitimate holder of the Skippy trademark.

That ruling, on First Amendment grounds, allows Tibbetts to continue her campaign, telling her story on the Internet and agitating for change and advocating a boycott of Unilever products. And now that her civil claim has been denied, she plans to petition the Justice Department for a criminal case.

She acknowledges crusade’s toll – financially, emotionally and physically. She also has been subject to nasty e-mail comments, including one writer who hoped she drowns in a giant vat of peanut butter.

A spokeswoman for Unilever, which has previously said Tibbetts’ claims are without merit, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

And just so we don’t leave you with a good taste in your mouth, a Skippy peanut butter television commercial from the 1950′s (caution, the ad may be a tad bit sexist):

…you aren’t in either of these videos. Both of these jingles are brand buiding tools for the same product. Which is more effective?

Frankly, I don’t believe the first video is actually a period piece circa 1983. The song just has too many tongue-in-cheek lines. I think it is a parody, made this year.

Which is funnier? This parody (?) of a brand identity firm like Landor / Interbrand designing a traffic “Stop” sign:

Or the case study from Landor’s own website, which details the naming and logo work they did for the merger of Fedex and Kinkos. The name Landor landed on, was of course Fedex Kinkos. The rationale:

Guided by brand strategy and research insights, Landor developed a creative name and identity solution that leverages the equity of both brands. The new brand identity, informed by the historical strengths of both companies, powerfully redefines the future of the business services marketplace.

But the funinest bit is when Landor explains the very specifc meanings they believe common colors communicate:

The identity contains a colorful brand icon that represents the collection of FedEx services available at the new retail locations – orange for the time-definite global express shipping services, green for the day-definite ground shipping services, and blue for the retail business service centers. At the heart of the icon, where the three colors converge, is purple, which symbolizes the can-do spirit shared by all FedEx companies.

Interestingly, design firms differ on what each color means.

Yup, it’s Poolife. They make products to clean swimming pools. It’s true.

In one of the worst name changes of ’07, London based Union Jack-offs formally know as Enterprise IG changed their name to…. Brand Union. Naturally they have put everything they have learned as a “world-class global brand agency, comprising 500 people across 21 offices” into the new name and logo.

Next time, maybe they could do a simple competitive analysis. If they had, they may have realized the lack of power the name “Brand Union” has, even within this small sample of their competitors:

Brand-DNA, Brand A, Brand 2.0, Brand Channel, Brand Design, Brand Doctors, Brand Evolve, Brand Evolution, Brand Fidelity, Brand Forward, Brand Institute, Brand Juice, Brand Ladder, Brand Link, Brand Maverick, Brand Mechanics, Brand Meta, Brand People, Brand Positioning, Brand Salt, Brandscape, Brand Scope, Brand Sequence, Brand Slinger, Brand Solutions, Brand Spark, Brand Vista, CoreBrand, Future Brand, Independent Branding, Interbrand, Not Just Any Branding, The Better Branding Company, The Brand Company, The Brand Consultancy, Trading Brands.

Ignorance is a bitch.

If your company or product is in need of a truly shitty “world class name and identity”, you now know where to go.

Or you could get one on sale at Grand Union.

.. but they still can’t name to save their ass.

However, that is a nice pic of Anthony Shore on the hompage. And as hard as it is to believe ladies, he is straight and available (Post-ops considered).

Anth’s interests include phlebotomy, Harry Potter and calf massages (we forgot to ask which definition of “calf” he intended).

If in a vulnerable moment you do find yourself in bed with Landor on your next naming project, be safe, use a mental dam.

Should you wake up and realize you’ve been badly screwed by a “full service
agency”, there is always Plan B or Plan B.

But for those looking for a really spectacular hump, there is no substitute for Plan A.

Blasting Landor’s ridiculous work used to be a burden shouldered solely by Igor, but now the mainstream media has taken up the slack. Via Design Week:

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream – acquired by Unilever in 2000 – was a pioneer of faux-naif design, with its cartoon pictures of cows, clouds and daisies, smile-in-the-mind copy and child-like handwriting. Some see Innocent’s branding as an imitation of Pete & Johnny’s smoothies, which created the UK smoothie market in 1994 and adopted a Ben & Jerry’s, child-like style. Acquired by PepsiCo in 2005, the brand was renamed PJ Smoothies and relaunched with a cold, corporate look by Landor Associates, which failed to strike a chord with consumers.

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Ok, just how many social bookmarking / link services can the Web accommodate? And will somebody please stop the madness and Just Say No to social bookmarking icon overkill on their blogs?

Click the image to engorge this example, where below the icons that appeared on an actual blog we’ve listed the service associated with each:

Be sure to savor the keen glut of Web 2.oism exhibited by the names above; for those of you who can still remember the ’90s, it’s deja vu all over again. Especially annoying is the spreading virus of interstitial periodicity that began with del.icio.us, as far as we care to tell, and has now spawned, just from the above sampling, “De.lirio.us” (you go girrl!), “co.mments” and the delightful “Ma.gnolia”. If you know of more, post them here in the Comments and we’ll compile a full list of these atrocities. U digg?

UPDATE 7.19: Tate, who publishes the “actual blog” in question (it has something to do with naming, I think, but what do we know?), has removed all the pretty little Web 2.0 icons from his site and written about the whole exhilarating experience: Oh yeah, well… um… You have bad posture! Does this represent a SURGE of defections from the social bookmarking iconoplastering movement? Only time will toil.

Or perhaps you need to rename an existing business? Let’s say, perchance, that you opened up a drinking establishment, and giddy with excitement you thought, “The Loose Stool would be a good name”. But now your little bar has become a bistro, and the chili is selling poorly…

Wordlab to the (free) rescue! Yes our sister site Wordlab has a number of specific naming groups with free forums where registered members can post their naming needs and other members will help you name anything, at no cost.