Rio takes gold in the Olympic Logo battle

Last month, the logo for the 2016 Rio Olympics was revealed to the world. The curvy logo represents three embracing, flowing figures one each in ocean blue, sandy gold and rainforest green. Beneath it Rio2016 is written in a simple, script typeface. It's lively, energetic and all-encompassing. It's not overly clever and could have been designed in any decade; it's timeless.

Which sort of rubs salt into the wounds of the controversial, bold, but ultimately flawed London 2012 logo. Everything about the London Olympics seems to spark debate, from the budget of the opening ceremony to the confusing ticket allocation process. But nothing seems to have caused as much outrage as the logo.

When it was revealed by it's creators, brand consultants Wolff Olins, on 4th June 2007, it was met with a barrage of criticism from the public and the design critics. 80% of people polled by the BBC gave the logo the lowest possible rating. Most of the controversy came from the fact that the logo allegedly "cost £400,000", and led to it quickly becoming the butt of many a joke. "The Sun" even printed a design by a monkey that it's readers proclaimed was preferable.

Many in the design world decided to give the logo the benefit of the doubt, perhaps because it's defendants, including Lord Coe, advised us that this logo was aimed at a youth audience, and hoped to inspire interest in The Games from a younger audience. We hoped Coe and Wolff Olins had greater foresight than the detractors and that this logo was simply ahead of it's time. We hoped that half a decade down the line, magenta angular shapes would be de rigour.

Now we're firmly into that future, and the eyes of the world turn to London for the final countdown. The logo was conceived in the mid-noughties, and now looks even more odd. Aiming the logo at a youth market meant drawing on youth culture; which at the time was all about 80s-revival and NuRave, and this was clearly an influence. 5 years is a long time in the light-speed worlds of fashion and youth culture, and the logo now looks as cutting edge as the Killers or the TingTings or the first iPhone. It's like London is hosting a party, wearing a glow-in-the-dark Klaxons t-shirt. That could be the fault of the designers being to easily-led by youth culture that is changes it's shape faster than ever, or worse still, the logo was "designed by committee".

Identities for public bodies in the UK are all too often created by large numbers of people with opposing agendas and different ideas, instead of trusting in the leadership of a single creative vision. Most of the time this way of working produces the blandest of results, but combine this with "outside the box thinking" and you can have a spectacular design disaster.

London 2012 felt the pressure to do something radical, something edgy with it's identity, and did, and credit is due for the bravery of whoever made that call. Sadly the influences they called upon were already out of date.

But the look of the logo is only really half the problem. A good piece of design has a balance of form and function, weighted towards one side or the other, but always with both working together. The Olympics logo could still be something to be proud of, if it's functionality redeemed it's controversial styling. Sadly, it fails on that front too. Zach Braff, star of Scrubs, said in a TV interview in January 2012 that he'd seen the 2012 logo "all of the the place" in London, but hadn't realised it was for the Olympics, which sums the problem up perfectly, and it seems he's not alone with many tourists struggling to identify the message behind the pointy shapes. In simple terms, you don't have to be able to work out what a logo is meant to be, but if you don't know what it's for it simply doesn't work.

By the time 2016 comes around, the Rio logo won't raise as many eyebrows as the London one but hopefully by then, the world will be remembering London 2012 for the success of our city and our team, not the disappointing effort of our logo.

Branded with fear - brands associated with UK rioting show there is such a thing bad publicity

In August 2011, UK rioting shone a mirror back onto modern British society. Historically, civil unrest in Britain has been fuelled by inequality, and political dissatisfaction, and although there is undoubtably an element of these factors behind this latest, unparalleled violence, the general consensus seems to be that the one significant cause was the very modern culture of consumerism.

As parts of London and then other cities erupted into chaos, with young men and women of all ethnicities looting and causing damage to property on an unprecedented scale, it rapidly became apparent that this was not a unified anti-establishment anarchic protest, it was simply robbery and on a mass-scale, fuelled by selfish greed.

In the days that followed experts and politicians pondered the causes of this sudden, extreme flare-up. Many have pointed the finger at 'bling-culture', the phenomenon of recent times where people, regardless of their level of income, desire items of high value, mainly to impress their peers. Bling culture came about in the credit-rich area before the recession, were people were able to acquire clothing, cars and gadgets by spending beyond their means. Now, post-credit crunch, possessing these items has become harder for most people, and is more often than not, impossible. But they're still there, and advertising teases people that can't have them.

The job of advertising and marketing industries create these impossible dreams, to exaggerate the desirability of these items. Successful campaigns are emotive, making objects and brands become "must-haves", things without which life can to somehow seem incomplete. An increase in the use of celebrities to endorse products portrays owning these products to be t not a by-product of success or fame, but a necessity to achieve it. The modern idea of celebrity in the UK adds to the tantalisation; as 'ordinary' people can acquire the desirable lifestyles with little or no talent, education or effort. This can addd to the frustration of many young people who wonder "why can they have all that, and I can't?".

Most people, including young people, are smart enough to realise that the imagery of advertising is myth, and understand that campaigns rely on aspiration towards lifestyles that are essentially fantasies. But some people, perhaps those with poor education or lack of opportunity, may somehow believe that these lifestyles could actually exist but outside their own environment. Lifestyles, rich in designer brands and hi-tech products, which are so close and yet so far away.

The effect of certain brands on British youth can be gleaned by looking for patterns in the looting. Adidas, JD Sports and Foot Looker were hit in almost every town were rioting occurred, whilst branches Waterstones remained untouched. Designer brands like Yves Saint-Lauren and Bang and Olufsen were stripped bare, as their products have massive resale street value. This was selective looting, and the brands whose marketing has worked best on those responsible, suffered the most damage.

Take for example Adidas. More significant than the damage to it's stripped-bare stores around the country is the damage to the Adidas brand image itself. On the mornings that followed nights of fear and chaos, newspapers were full of images of looters and rioters, hundreds of which wore hoodies and sportswear emblazoned with the Adidas logo or it's iconic three-stripes. Recent Adidas campaigns have played along with the bling-culture attitude of it's fanbase, but will the global giant want to continue apparently producing the uniform of an angry, hostile, threatening section of society? It's doubtful, especially when other target markets, such as the wealthy middle-class sports market, will not want to be associated with these values. Adidas will need to do some serious repositioning, probably following the example Burberry has been doing for the last decade to try shake off it's perception as the uniform of "chavs" and football hooligans.

There are many factors to blame for the rioting and looting. Bad parenting, public sector cuts, failing education, even video games and music will all be brought into the debate at some point. But the advertising industry must look at what it's role in modern British culture is. Fuelling the desires and unreal aspirations of people without opportunity is dangerous.

Many young people are growing up feeling that the life they have is not the one they want and can see no way to achieve it. They feel that the lifestyle they want can almost be touched but not quite; as it they're staring at it through a pane of glass. And for some, the only way to get beyond that glass is to smash it.

Crowdsourcing - How this modern phenomena could crowd out professional designers

Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, to an undefined, large group of people or community through an open call on the internet. It's the closest we may get to typing a creative brief into a computer and getting creative, intelligent and original solutions back, except it's not the computer doing the work, it's the wisdom of the crowd.

It's a process which has proved useful to local (and recently national) government in the UK in the sourcing of policy-changing ideas. It has also been used to get feedback by brands on new products but this week an article on BBC Radio 4 gave a worrying prediction of how crowdsourcing could become a word feared and loathed by the design community of the UK.

Speaking on "You and Yours", Jeff Howe author, 'Wired' contributor and the man creditted with coining the term, gave a worrying example of how, in the USA, crowdsourcing is becoming commonplace in marketing, advertising, and specifically logo design.

"It's a very effective way for a small business to say, 'I need a logo, I'll pay $200 for it', a community of graphic designers will put together rough artwork...and the company gets to choose from 200 or 300 logos all for $200. It's an amazing model and it's emerging as a real threat to traditional marketing and design agencies".

Crowdsourcing agencies like the ones Howe mentions have been operating in the UK for years, but they may about to hit the mainstream, as businesses look to cut costs through new ways of working. In these austere times, the UK's large creative agencies are already struggling to compete with smaller, more flexible, faster and less expensive competitors, as clients bypass the middle-men and reach out to the creative minds at the sharp end of campaigns, but will clients ever go beyond that and use this multiple-minds approach?

But crowdscourcing is almost the opposite of outsourcing by reputation. It's not about getting a creative solution tailored to the clients needs, with an understanding of their offering, their brand and their target audience, it's simply about getting as many ideas as possible for little or even no budget. Quantity is prioritised over quality, with the theory being that with potentially infinite solutions available, a 'right' solution will be returned, but in the subjective world of design, there are never any right answers.

Crowdsourcing turns creative briefs into competitions, the sort of contests that most creatives can't afford to spend time participating in once they are working professionally. In a time when the creative industry is brimming with new talent (where anyone can set themselves up as a professional designer) experienced creatives may find themselves competing with undergraduates, amateurs and unqualified 'design cowboys', all of whom have almost as much chance of getting their work selected by an misguided client. Globalization makes the prospect of crowdsourcing an even bleaker concept for UK designers, as competition from developing countries or those with much lower living costs force down the value of the designers skill.

But as Howe explains, this is a sign of the times, and the latest of examples of how the web continues to revolutionise industry. "When we say that the internet is the biggest revolution since Guttenburg, that means something. It means that the status quo doesn't stay the same. It means people lose their jobs. It means completely new and unthought of phenomena emerge, because revolutions are bloody things...the only constant will be change."

Characters - the Simples way to make a boring brand stand out

You may not know who Alexandr Orlov is, but he is one of the most successful figures in UK advertising. His followers on social network sites total around a million, his catchphrase has become part of the vernacular, and his 'autobiography' looks likely to outsell those of Tony Blair, Keith Richards and Nelson Mendella this Christmas.

Alexandr is the anthropomorphic meerkat that fronts the marketing campaign for insurance 'screen-scraper' website, Compare The Market. He is one of the most successful creations in British advertising, and the campaign he stars in has helped the price comparison site see a record boost in earnings of £60 million this year.

He is not the first character used to liven up a boring product, advertisers have been trying to capture the imagination over financial products ever since the days of the original 'Access' campaign. But Alexandr has

become one of the most popular advertising frontmen ever, and has even been made into a cuddly toy. This is a league reserved for such ad icons as Flat Eric, The Honey Monster and Monkey from ITV Digital / PG Tips. On the back of Orlov's success, rival companies have gone for character-based campaigns too. These include the equally annoying Go Compare tenor and Omid Djalilli's haggler.

Why exactly Orlov became such a runaway success is unsure, some have said that not all of his popularity may be welcome, as his catchphrase has by anti-Eastern European xenophobes. No ad creative would ever want their creation to be warped into the poster boy of bullies and bigots.

But whatever the reason for the meteoric rise of this celebrity mongoose, no one can deny that creating a character (however annoying) that has cross-generational appeal and can actually make something as dull as car insurance sell, is anything but Simples.

Mind the Gap - Facebook halts facelift

In the first week of October, retail giant Gap aired it’s new logo on the web. Ditching it’s iconic serif text on a blue box in favour of a smaller gradient-filled blue box overlapped by a large, simple Helvetica bold logotype.

Within 7 days, the logo had been slated so much by web forums and social media feeds it was scrapped. At the time of writing, Gap seem undecided as to what to do next, but may be reverting to their 20-year old original. 

The U-turn is interesting, and is another milestone in the impact social media is having on marketing. Every brand, is wise to get as much feedback from it’s audience as possible, and Facebook, Twitter, etc are the obvious routes to road-test any product or concept before it goes live. But Gap learnt the hard-way that internet critics are very vocal, with the negative boos disproportionally sounding out the positive cheers, and that the very nature of social media means that once a tide has turned, public opinion is easily swayed. 

Some marketing experts say the whole thing is a PR-stunt, with Gap trying to show that it not only listens to it’s customers but dances to their tune. I doubt this is the case, in fact I think that the radical change in styling of the logo was down to Gap struggling with it’s own identity as a brand. 

Helvetica logotypes are everywhere. The classic simplicity has always made it the designers chosen typeface. In the 1990s, Helvetica popped up everywhere usually in an ultralight, lower-case form that echoed the penchant for minimalism of that decade. Gap was no exception, with the font used in it’s campaigns, alongside the solid square serif logo.

Then, post-millenium, Gap (and Helvetica) fell slightly out of fashion.The 1990s had been an era of minimalism and utilitarianism, so Gap with it’s plain t-shirts and khaki cargo pants had thrived, but in the turn of the century, retailers like Hennes and Primark begun to encroach on Gaps gap as of affordable cool, with products that were more popular, cheaper and in Europe took their inspiration from either side of the Atlantic. In a decade of anti-Americanism, Gap with it’s US ethos, couldn’t do this. 

In recent years, there’s been a massive rise in utilitarian fashion brands that compete for Gaps customers. Brands like Bench, GoiGoi and Superdry have been in favour in recent years and all share a common branding theme that’s splashed across their products.: Heavy Helvetica, sentence-case logotypes. Helvetica (with a capital H) has had a return to the high street and it’s been big and bold. 

And so we find the reasons for Gap’s major restyle of it’s logo. Caught between cheaper brands and more stylish ones, Gap is struggling to find it’s, gap.

Bringing in the chunky sans serif is their way of showing it can sit alongside the popular brands and keeping the blue square implies it’s trying to retain it’s own heritage.

Caving in under a wave of web-based public opinion is probably not the best way to win support from a discerning market. We want our fashion brands to be strong and dictating not asking us our opinion and going back to the drawing board we don’t like something. 

Gap should have had the courage to stand by the logo, whatever the initial reaction was, safe in the knowledge it’s branding agency had already done it’s homework, and it’s designers had found a solution that represented the current outlook of the business. 

If brands start being threatened by social media instead of advised by it, then originality, creativity and progress will be stifled. Design decisions cannot be made by committee, and they definitely can’t be made be crowds. Gap had it’s chance to stand up to the criticism, shame it was only it’s typeface that was bold. 

The Chip Shops - Not to everyone's taste, but to us they're healthy

Industry awards are something that all us creative agencies strive for. "The Creams" and "The Roses" are the Oscars or the Brits the creative, advertising, graphic design and marketing worlds, and we hope that one day several of these prestigious gongs with take pride of place on the MOJO studio shelf. In fact, several MOJO concepts have already helped other agencies receive award nominations and win prizes. A campaign Dudley Council based on a Matt Oakley concept was nominated for a Cream Award in 2000. And two Bosch campaigns MOJO created in association with Birmingham's Blue Chilli Marketing were awarded Best Niche Marketing Campaign at Bosch's own International Marketing Awards.

In recent years there's been a new set of awards that have been caused a stir in the creative community, and which advertising creatives and graphic designers are really prizing. They are called the Chip Shop Awards, and they are the design/creative equivilant of the NME awards, winning one equals kudos from the most critical of peers. The Chip Shops commend creativity with no holds barred; ideas without rules. Submissions to the Chip Shops are often fictional ads that could never actually be used, because they are too controversial or too tricky to get approved by advertising authorities and with otherwise never see the light of day. They are generally homages to existing established campaigns, taking a brand proposition to somewhere it's creators would never dare to have taken it. They also include concepts or branding for imaginary products. Many ideas are too shocking to ever be shown to a real client, but too good not to be shared with an audience. The Chip Shop awards are a place where creativity can live without the constraints of censorship, with campaigns based around innuendo, political incorrectness and colourful language; ideas that are funny, clever, original, shocking, witty, satirical and ingenius. 

For us, we see the chance for agencies to show their teeth and produce such a completely creative brief can only be healthy for the UK advertising industry. This years showcase include adverts that poke fun at Tiger Woods infidelity, the ignorance of the BNP, Cheryl Cole's marital breakdown and misadventures of Toyota. Some of the more teeth-clenching ideas include a poster for HMV film ad about celebrity drug overdose, an Amputee Support Group poster and an ad for Pledge that features an actual polished turd. The winners this year include a press ad for a camera that can work in an earthquake and a new beer brand called Responsibly (ie. the brand is promoted by its own rivals who legally have to encourage their own patrons to "Drink Responsibly") 

Some brands take offense at the way their brand identities are twisted by the Chip Shop Awards, perhaps rightly so in some cases. A well-known optician chain refused to let their logo appear on an award-winning entry that showed a man posting a letter in the eye slot of an Islamic lady's yashmak. Other brands have embraced the controversy, and some of the entries have covertly slipped out into the national press or run riot on the web. Whether this guerilla marketing was deliberate or not is unclear, but just because a message isn't part of the official campaign, if it reinforces that message or just brings attention to it, then the old adage about "bad publicity" never rang truer.

Look out for MOJO entries at future Chip Shop Awards, and to see the best of this years entries go to http://www.chipshopawards.com/

Location-based advertising could be closer than you think.

This month Apple ruled that it would not permit the use of user location-based advertising on the iPhone/iPad/iPod through Apps bought from The App Store.

Developers had been trying to use the gagdets' GPS location technology to promote products, places and services in proximity of a user. So an iphone user could be near a cinema, and get a tweet, email or text telling them of offers or upcoming movies. Or a restaurant could send out news of available tables to all potential diners in proximity.

Does Apple want to protect us all from the annoyance of a new form of SPAM? Or are they just after a slice of the pie. Allowing developers to take on this technology free of charge would mean handing over invaluable information about it's customers for free, hanging onto it could mean another massive way of profiting from the hugely successful site by selling it on to App developers and advertisers. App Store users are worried that Apple lording it over software developers in this way could mean  free apps become a thing of the past or mean developers favour other platforms like Android. 

But the significant interest here for us is what this will mean for marketing. The popularity of iPhones and other smartphones continues to grow day by day, across the world, as does our desire to fill them up with location-based Apps. When deals do eventually get done on this, it'll only be a matter of time before ads targeted like never before start to become common place.

There'll still be a need for the "blanket-bomb" approaches of traditional campaigns, filling newspapers and billboards, but ultra-targeted "sniper" advertising becomes commonplace.

Our Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and online shopping histories already provide an extensive profile of our interests, our economic status and our general likes and dislikes. This information would have been very hard to glean from most savvy consumers just a few years ago, and would have required sneaky tricks (competitions, surveys and customer incentives) to get most people to offer it up. Nowadays we upload a detailed, colourful and complete picture of our entire personality, adding to it day by day. We follow our favourite brands, become fans of celebs we like and tell shout about our aspirations and politics.

And so creative agencies are rethinking they way the communicate brands to consumers. Advertising will need to be designed to adapt and incorporate the personal information of specific individuals. It will then need to physically lead a prospective customer direct to a product.

A new form of advertising could be just around the corner.