Marketing: OK, that’s a cool new logo, but what does it mean?

What does this say to you?

It was presented a great new logo/brand, but I was immediately mystified by the overall image.  I see a child walking purposefully with some sort of holographic magnet encompassing her.  Is she approaching a terra cotta mound but deciding to avoid large pieces of used chewing gum?  No, wait, is that a reclining Disney character’s nose with pimples or boogers on it, and she, a Lilliputian?  OK, my third attempt can more realistically see a climbing mound with spots for handholds and footholds.  That’s probably supposed to say something about “community” and how the organization care about families and children, but all that is just talk, and many people probably haven’t even seen a climbing wall, much less can they relate to it.  This image doesn’t clearly communicate community, or anything else meaningful, to me.  If you see more in the image, that’s fine, but I’m confident I’m not alone.  I’m also baffled by many images on car dashboards, and I’m not the only one in that group.

The logo itself—the blue thingy that seems to want to abduct (insert audio image of frightening EMP-like sound here) the unsuspecting girl—is also meaningless as an object.  It has some aesthetic appeal.  It has nice lines and curves, and I was once advised that blue color tends to project confidence.

Really, though, what does the logo say, and what does it mean?  Let’s read a little of the verbiage that accompanied the roll-out:

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_____ is excited to announce the launch of our new brand. This next chapter is an exciting and important step to further distinguish ____ ___.

Our new brand—encompassing everything from our visual identity and logo to our voice and tone—proudly projects the _____  ____difference.

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And I say phooey.  This brand, this logo . . . they do zero along the lines of “further distinguishing,” if indeed it was distinguished to begin with.  The brand neither suggests nor explicitly offers an “identity”; therefore, no difference (from what?) is actually projected.  I don’t want to pinpoint the particular organization as though it is singularly at fault.  This is but one example of marketing people who think their work is making sense, or is worth the time and money invested in it.  Then again, maybe if I had had better personal marketing in, say, 1994 or 2004 or 2024, I might not be where I am!

I find the whole marketing enterprise to be a tail-chasing waste of effort.  They (whoever they are) say marketing is important, and part of me says “I know you’re right” while the rest of me says “phooey.”  Really, nobody cares about your logo that was months in the making, your navel-gazing creation of “brand,” your overblown sense of company identity, or your giveaways.  Those things simply don’t matter to most people.  They either want what you’re selling, or they don’t.  As for myself, as far as I can tell, I am not influenced by logo images or other marketing efforts.

Annnnd . . . (wait for it) . . .

Church gimmickry, logos, and mission statements are no better!  Last week, I noticed a church flyer just recently that shows even less connection with reality than a blue magnet shows.  The person behind the church flyer is a plasticized, hollow-sounding speaker who found himself smack-dab in the middle of a “senior pastor” role although he does not have nearly the communicative gift of his predecessor.  He is surely as sincere in his faith as the day is long, but he doesn’t seem to connect with people very convincingly, and his idea of how to “sell” Jesus shows that ineptitude, so maybe he should have entrusted the marketing to someone else . . . or maybe that, too, would have made no difference.

Another church bears this logo:

What do you see in that, and what do you think of it?  For me, it is a more meaningful and communicative image than the first one.  Nothing is overdone.  I see a drop of blood, which I can quickly associate with the cross of the Christ, and the balanced reds are visually effective.  The idea behind this, as you might now assume, is that Jesus is the Cure.  The word “church,” while important in order to make this a Christian banner and not a medical one, is well placed beneath the blood image and the other words.  Ruminating more, I wonder if they pondered the horizontal alignment of the word “Church.”  The white color of two words, and the placement suggest a double reading:  “The Church” and “The Cure Church.”  Would a center-alignment have been better?  I don’t know.

In one visit to a Cure church—a small group of “nondenominational”¹ churches—with a friend, I found that the group seems just like what it claims to be on its web pages.  For one thing, it does emphasize the centrality of the good news of Jesus and how that message could impact, or cure, the secular world around.  (I’ll leave alone the definition of “gospel”; that would be a tangent here.)  There would be aspects to challenge and discussed, but the image is, for me, decidedly more effective and communicative than the one shared at the top of this page.  It’s a cool logo, and it means something . . . although I doubt it is all that effective.

For more unsolicited opinions on marketing:

Musing on marketing

Shame

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¹ As I told our friend, “nondenominational” is good.  However, in the oddly quotable words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.“