Time to Weigh in on the 2014 World Cup Logo
July 15, 2010
While the 2014 World Cup champions continue to celebrate, the rest of the world waits for 2014 when the World Cup will be in Brazil. I thought it might be a good time to take a step away from corporate branding for a day and have some fun with sports branding, specifically, the 2014 World Cup logo.
The official 2014 World Cup logo was revealed last week, and as with most global sporting event logos (e.g., the Olympic Games), everyone seems to have an opinion on this attempt by Brazilian agency Africa. You can see the official 2014 World Cup logo in the image to the left. The official press release explains that the logo is a representation of, “an iconic photograph of three victorious hands together raising the world’s most famous trophy,” and the colors are representative of Brazilian culture.
There is a even a video representation of the logo, which is actually interesting. You can check it out below.
The most vocal critiques of the logo claim that it’s too “crude” and the illustration and execution are “unrefined”. I can see that point, but I really don’t have a problem with this logo. I think the concept is strong and the design seems to be purposefully loose. While I can definitely see that a stronger illustration could make the logo even better visually, I’m not certain that was the designer’s actual goal.
What do you think of the 2014 World Cup logo? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Is Your Corporate Website Ready To Audition?
July 14, 2010
This morning I was at my son’s primary school, watching their end-of-term version of Britain’s Got Talent: 17 groups of small children dancing, singing, playing instruments and telling jokes. (Electric guitar, since you ask).
It was, of course, exactly as you’d expect, but the judges found something genuinely good to say about all of them, even when it went horribly wrong.
And sometimes there were flashes of something very special.
It struck me that this was really very like my day job of reviewing and assessing corporate websites.
Superficially, corporate sites can seem similar and predictable – after all, they have to cover pretty much the same ground, and provide the same sort of information. However, when we take the time to look, there’s almost always something interesting and unique about them, at least if the company spends any time making the site about themselves.
And that’s the point: a corporate site is the opportunity to show off the unique nature and talents of the company – to sell the corporate brand. Every day is audition day, and every visitor a judge. The prize, of course, being engagement with the visitor if they decide to buy, to invest, to apply for a job, to read your material, to write about you.
Just like the children I saw this morning, every company is unique and has its own personality. But some present themselves better than others. And, just sometimes, we see something really unexpected, something that changes our perception of the company.
I’m glad I didn’t have to judge today’s talent competition, but I am one of the panel of judges for Communicate Magazine’s Digital Impact Awards. We’re shortlisting now and I hope to meet some of the entrants at the awards dinner in September. Do let us know if that’s you, and come and say hello!
Jeremiah Owyang’s Roadmap for the Corporate Website
July 14, 2010
Jeremiah Owyang is definitely one of the most influential voices in the social media space–and he has questioned the relevance of traditional corporate websites in the new online landscape. In this presentation he outlines the issues and projects a path toward integration of social media and corporate website.
Although his overview is mainly focused on consumer-facing aspects of the corporate site, and he doesn’t touch on Careers or employer branding, the presentation offers some very useful information and insights. Worth watching!
Making your Corporate Website Relevant
And here’s the related post.
Interesting note: This presentation has received more than 16,000 views on SlideShare and is embedded on more than 60 sites.
How One Twitter Account Got 40,000 Followers in 5 Days and with Just 3 Tweets
July 13, 2010
On July 8, 2010, Twitter announced its new @earlybird profile. With just 2 tweets published on July 8th and 1 tweet published on July 9th, the @earlybird profile had nearly 40,000 followers by July 12th. Not bad. Check it out below.
What’s so special about this Twitter profile that people want to follow it? Simple — they believe the promise of what this Twitter profile, called Twitter @earlybird Exclusive Offers, claims to be able to deliver — real-time deals and exclusive, limited-time only discounts. If you follow @earlybird, great discounts will appear in your Twitter stream, so you can take advantage of them before they disappear.
Here is how Twitter describes @earlybird Exclusive Offers on the Twitter Help Center:
“Twitter @earlybird Exclusive Offers are special time-bound deals, sneak-peeks, and events that are promoted by the official Twitter @earlybird account. We partner with select advertisers and retweet offers that they have crafted only for the Twitter community. Our advertising partners determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and price. As with other forms of advertising from Twitter, we are focused on bringing value to our users and will keep your interests in mind as we develop this program.”
Twitter partners with advertisers to choose the deals to promote on the @earlybird profile, which will always be time-sensitive or supply-sensitive. Of course, Twitter will make some money from these partnerships, too. At first, advertising partners will represent large, international brands or be focused on the U.S. market, but in time, Twitter plans to roll out more diverse deals, location-based deals, category-specific deals, and more.
As the success of the @DellOutlet Twitter profile demonstrates, consumers truly do use Twitter to find useful promotions and deals. Twitter might just have something with the @earlybird Exclusive Offers program. The company certainly needs to find ways to make money, and since the @earlybird Exclusive Offers program is opt-in, consumers only see the tweets and deals if they take an action and follow the @earlybird profile. Advertisers also benefit from the opt-in feature, since followers are likely to be more receptive to the promotions they hear about through @earlybird.
I think it’s safe to assume that if the deals tweeted through the @earlybird profile are good ones, we’ll see that list of 40,000 followers grow quickly. What do you think?
What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 20: Annual Reports – Make Them Easy for Investors to Find
July 9, 2010
For investors seeking information about a company, probably the single best source is that company’s annual report to shareholders. The annual report is an opportunity for companies to tell their story in detail to investors every year, combining a message from the Chairman and management with comprehensive financial information. So it makes sense to feature the report prominently on the investor relations web sites of companies.
Yet what I see on the web varies widely as it relates to a company’s annual report. Some companies give prominent display to their annual reports, with large graphics or prominent links to the document. Others bury the report among all other governmental filings. This is further compounded by the fact that some companies elect to give their reports a glossy finish, while others treat it as another bureaucratic form to be filled out. Finally, there are a number of ways that annual reports can be displayed on the web. So it almost goes without saying that one solution will not fit all companies.
With that as a lead-in, what I will try to do over the course of the next few segments of this series is to highlight what I think are some of the more effective methods companies use to highlight their reports. This first piece will simply look at best ways to make sure investors can find your annual report. Here are a few examples:
The mining company Anglo American takes a front and center approach to featuring its annual report with a bold visual and link in the middle of the page.
The defense contractor EADS takes a comprehensive approach to featuring its annual report, providing both a word link in the middle of the page and a graphic link on the bottom.
The approaches of these two sites are better than you see in many other sites which take a more general approach, simply placing a generally named text link in the page menu appearing on either the left or right hand side of the page. If you want to feature your annual report – and I suggest that it is a good thing to do – effective web site design means that you create a spot where investors can easily find the link to the report.
In this series:
Previous post: Help your most frequent visitors
Next post: Annual Reports II
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