Category Archives: COMM 296

Some of the brand logos that we are accustomed to today have experienced various phases of evolution. Tim Nudd on Adweek.com blogs about  the evolutionary changes  and potential logo changes of famous brands.

I thought Nudd’s predictions were fun and interesting to look at. When analysing the logos, you realize that the logos are beyond names and symbols; they can be a representation of a company’s relationship with consumers and consumers’ behaviour toward the company. Gap, for instance, launched a new company logo in 2010 that claims to provide “a more contemporary, modern expression.” (Parr, 2010) The new logo resulted with negative responses from consumers. Many comments criticizing the new logo were plastered on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Social media is a key influence in consumer behaviour. The negative word of mouth spreads quickly and can damage the relationship between the consumers and the company. Gap no doubt reverted back to its original blue box logo. This demonstrates how a logo is can be a strong representation of consumers’ identity. I enjoyed Nudd’s situational humour of Gap’s next logo change was creative.

When attempting to change logos, I think companies should stick to incorporating different colours other than the generic tones, black, grey, and white. As discussed in class, colours help establish moods for consumers. With different combinations of colours, it helps create a more engaging and upbeat atmosphere/look. As seen in Volkswagen’s chain of logo changes, it moved from tones (black and white) to colours (blue). Having a certain colour in your logo may help target a customer to feel a certain way about your product from the corresponding emotion of the colour.

Source:
Adweek.com

Facebook is offering free $50 advertising credits to up to 200,000 small businesses. Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, believes that every small business should be using Facebook to help market their goods or services as it can “target every single person [that] they need to target at least once, and then they can grow their businesses from there.” Similar to advertisements placed on Google, each advertiser has a set rate that they have to pay for every click a user makes. Now the first $50 will be free to up to 200,000 small businesses.

Although advertising on Facebook is cost-effective and easy to use and implement, I don’t think it will be very proficient in results. Facebook is a difficult advertising channel because its core purpose is social networking. Most of the users’ time is spent on reading friend’s recent updates, posting status updates, skimming through photos, etc… As a semi-active Facebook user myself, my attention is rarely focused on the ads. It’s instead diverted to the center of the page –the news feed or a friend’s profile page.

In addition, a large segment of Facebook users are young teenagers and college/university level students. This market segmentation generally does not have the direct income to purchase various products or services. The advertisement could capture the user’s interest, but the whole transaction may not be completed.

I think the free $50 credit serves as a good trial and error experience for small businesses to experiment with advertising on Facebook. Through the free $50 credit of advertisement on Facebook, small businesses can monitor the amount of page impressions and clicks they receive, and evaluate whether their product or service is effectively reached out to their targeted audience.

Source:
Facebook offers free ads to draw customers