Two more “Buried Secret” logos

By Richard Earle,
Regis Affiliate

This will be the last of our logo series, but both meet the criteria of having a buried restatement of the name, or a key branding element:

NorthWest is the more subtle of the two. Most folks get the addition of the arrow within the circle to help transform the “N”  of North into the “W” of  West, but look again. Imagine that the circle is a compass, and the arrow is the pointer. Where is it pointing? To the Northwest, of course!

Tostitos are branded to stand for a party; a good time with friends. So the two “Ts” in their logo  are turned into friends sharing a Tostito over a bowl of salsa, strategically placed atop the  “i”.

Logo & web design: the crowdSPRING alternative

By Richard Earle,
Regis Affiliate


As a consultant, your role is that of teacher and adviser, but every so often, I learn from a client, and I’m  happy to admit  it! 

Usually, when I consult with a client on branding  or rebranding, I find that they have a  staff designer  or a design firm that they are used to working with, and trust, and that’s fine. The Regis way is to work with a client, and organize and guide them into a plan or strategy that is truly theirs. So we work with them to develop a very tight Creative Brief, and often I work with their designer to execute it.

Recently, I worked with a client and we did a Branding session with client and their design firm. We put together a strong creative brief  and I assumed that the designers and I would go to work on an identity package. Then the client called out of the blue and said she had strong disagreement with the design firm and fired them. But since we were under a very tight deadline, she suggested crowdSPRING.

I admit to being quite skeptical, having had them recommended by another client, and after checking their web site, and noting the extravagant claims there (“over 72,000 designers, worldwide,” “a professional logo for as little as $200” “the world’s best creative team”) I said there’s no way this system can work, especially since one of my early mentors, Bill Bernbach, had turned advertising around by elevating the Art Director to full Creative partnership with the writer. Some of my best creative moments occurred sitting in a room with an Art Director, tossing ideas back and forth. Th e idea of doing this electronically with someone thousands of miles away made me very leary.   

Knowing that some clients pay anywhere from  $5-50,000 for a logo (Coke is rumored to have paid in the millions for theirs!) I remained skeptical as we started the process. My client posted a low-ball fee of $250, and a time frame of two weeks, and posted our very detailed Creative Brief , including a tag line, so I frankly expected about a dozen or so submissions. Actually, we got over 70!

They came from all over the world, and new ones were added every day. Most were quite professional and some were modified by the designers in subsequent postings. The one we all agreed was best was from a young designer in Transylvania. Once we had selected him we were urged to contact him by e-mail. His command of English  was excellent, and we went through a week of normal client/designer give-and-take, over color palette and such. All requests  were professionally answered in a timely fashion, and we finally got a very satisfactory logo for $250 from a  guy who lives somewhere in the neighborhood of Dracula’s castle!  

Check out the crowdSPRING web site at  http://www.crowdspring.com. Ignore the hyperbole and try them out! We can’t promise you’ll have the kind of smooth experience we had, but for $2-500 bucks, it’s worth a try!

Twitter rises to the top of the Social network heap through its use as a sounding board by hip (hop) recording artists

By Richard Earle,
Regis Affiliate 

Like many of my associates, I have watched with interest as the 3 major social networks, Facebook, Twittter, and Linked-In battled for dominance in the social media arena.

Linked-In has sort of faded in my admittedly limited world, while Facebook has come on strong. Many of my friends are posting daily description of their family activities, accompanied by cell photos, and even videos

I would have given it the clear lead, when an article last week in the NY Times caught my eye. Headlined “Hip-Hop’s New Medium for Choice Words,” it claimed that Twitter was now the medium of choice for rappers, whom most under-30s would certainly agree are the coolest cats around.

When they have an important message for either their fans or a fellow artist, they turn to Twitter. The article’s first example is Kanye West, the impulsive rapper who stepped all over singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the Music Video Awards by jumping up on stage uninvited and taking over the microphone to announce that in his opinion, the award should have gone to another artist.

As the Times put it, “It was early last Saturday morning, or perhaps very, very late the previous night, when the stream of emotional posts began appearing on Kanye West’s Twitter feed: “The media tried to demonize me,” “I felt the recession from the ownership side,” “I’m ready to get out of my own way,” “I’m sorry Taylor.””

Please note that the medium where West felt the most heat, and on which he chose to apologize, was Twitter. It was also the battleground for Soulja Boy and Fabolous’ infamous feud.

“More so than in any other genre, save for maybe teen-pop, stars of hip-hop have taken to Twitter. As a medium, it suits hip-hop’s instantaneity well. It also offers the illusion of outsider purity,” concludes the Times.

I have generally stayed away from Twitter because of their 140-character maximum post-length rule. But that may well be all today’s under-30 would sit still for.

And if they’re an important market to you, perhaps you should take note. And short-tweet Twitter may well win the Social Media race! 

A Tip of the Hat: Groupon.com

by Claudia Barrientos
Regis V.P. Client  Services


The down-turn in the economy has forced everyone, from large corporations to individuals to reconsider their spending habits.  An online article published earlier this year by business magazine Inc. reported a 27% increase in coupon use from 2008 (http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/02/coupon-use-hits-record-high.html).  The increase in coupon use has given way to new business ventures focused on bringing bargains to consumers.

One such successful venture is Groupon.com. 
Established at the height of the economic down-turn, Groupon was created to grant people access to community business that might otherwise be out of the consumer’s reach.  Groupon posts a discounted activity daily and “the deal is on” only if enough people purchase the activity.   A quota of Groupons must be purchased before a “deal is on” as Groupon likes to describe it.  Once the quota is reached, there is an additional number of Groupons that are promoted until sold or for a twenty-four hour period, whichever comes first.

Groupon’s success comes as a result of making things like fitness classes, salon visits, and restaurant outings accessible and affordable to the consumers.  In addition to boosting consumer power, Groupon serves as an advertising vehicle for local businesses and successfully promotes the concept of “buying local.”

Having had several successful Groupon experiences, (accessible at http://www.groupon.com/)I give Groupon.com a Tip of the Hat for their ingenuity and success.

The Tag Line: When it absolutely, positively has to make an emotional connection

By Richard Earle,
Regis Group Affiliate

I recently explored the Advertising Age blog site (www.adage.com), which always links to articles of interest in the mother publication. What caught my eye was an article on tag lines by Al Reis, a founder of Reis & Trout in New York City, who now has partnered with his daughter Laura in Atlanta. When he ran Reis and Trout in New York, he and his partner Jack Trout introduced the phrase “Positioning” which as far as I’m concerned was the basis for today’s much more sophisticated branding techniques. So what he had to say about tag lines (an important part of the branding “Identity package”) I wanted to know.

In this age of simple, short tag lines (“Just do it,” “Got Milk?”) Reis surmises that some marketers think that simply shorter is better. But what they forget is the emotional context that ties consumers to the tag line.

Among the many examples he gives are FEDEX and Perdue Chicken.  “Federal Express could have positioned itself as: ‘The overnight company.’  But it didn't. Instead, it launched a campaign that not only turned around the brand, but also made marketing history: ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.’" You can visualize someone yelling into the phone, "My package absolutely, positively has to be in L.A. tomorrow."

“When Frank Perdue was the spokesperson for his chicken brand, he could have said, ‘Perdue, the tender chicken.’ But he didn't. What he said built the brand and also made marketing history: ‘It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."

Al Reis concludes with this historical quote: “When Abraham Lincoln was asked how long a man's legs should be in proportion to his body, he replied, ‘They ought be long enough to reach the ground.’

How long should a slogan be? It should be long enough to reach an emotional connection in the consumer's mind.”

To read the complete article with many more examples, go to   Adage.com