But it would appear that they have now made things even worse by going back to the old logo, without the apostrophe.

Now i’m not going to get as pathetic as the Daily Mail with their typically over the top three headlines about it;

Move sparked outrage among customers – Really. That is utter crap. Who cares that much? Perhaps if some of the people who are so outraged by the lack of an apostrophe went into Waterstone’s and bought a book or two from them, they wouldn’t be in this much trouble.
Punctuation experts say it’s ‘grammatically incorrect’ – Yes, it’s a logo, a name of a business, not a piece of work being peer reviewed by academics. Advertising generally has always played a little fast and loose with punctuation. the ‘comma and’ or starting sentences with an ‘And’ debate came from the creative industry.
Twitter users warn the change is another step towards the ‘extinction’ of the apostrophe – Who cares? There are bigger things to worry about.

But the fundamental point is that Waterstone’s still haven’t changed their business and this sadly will do absolutely nothing to halt their slide. I am a very big book fan and consume books by the metre but I buy very little from Waterstone’s. Waterstones or even waterstones.com.

Unless they can engage us again, all the rebrands and debrands in the world will do nothing to stop this lovely old tug boat from sinking.

Firstly the music. Laid back and cool music by the Skatalites and two guys working there with luxuriant facial hair and a total focus on doing a great job.

The Tonsorial Artist - Holt, Norfolk

I had my meagre barnet tidied up by the slightly scary looking Doug, who was great, incredibly knowledgable and he gave me a great cut.

Doug from The Tonsorial Artist - Holt, Norfolk

All this and it was only £11.50 – admittedly more than I pay at my local barbers, but it felt like a real treat.

I love places like this and I would love to get my hands on their brand to do some work with – It would franchise out beautifully and would have people queuing out the door if it was done as well as they have delivered their outlet.. People who are doing great work and clearly differentiating themselves in what must be a quite crowded market.

If you’re ever in Holt, stay at Byfords Posh B&B and get a hair cut by the Tonsorial Artists.

I’m off to buy some now and then look for some logs to dance around on.

The Haka has always been something I have watched with fear and admiration, but today in the final of the Rugby World cup, I saw it for the first time as a brand marker for New Zealand. It shows their power, their determination and their ability to stand, miles from anywhere else in the world as a distinct nation, that is proud of its roots.

If you were going to write a few rules about a brand, they would be simple.

Do things well

Mean them, ie live your values

Build on your roots

Be differentiated.

They seem to have done all of these rather well here. And to be honest, it’s the first time I have ever seen anyone respond to it like the French. What a brilliant advertisement for the country and the sport of rugby.

Brirish Gas and their old and uncaring identity

There’s not a lot wrong with this. It says what they do, or rather what they did. Their business has obviously diversified and they need to move away from their obvious reliance on fossil fuels and the harm they bring to our planet. So they’ve changed it to this.

Brirish Gas who are now looking after our world for us

I don’t have a particular problem with the identity. It’s fine in fact. decent typo and a subtle shade of green has been snuck into the logo. Good work team.

But the strapline. ‘Looking after your world’. Behave.

What a bunch of trite shite.

How are they looking after our world, by dragging tons of gas out and burning it?

Straplines are always a difficult issue, but this one is on the verge of vomit inducing. If it was my job, i’d drop it and quit the pretence before everyone does an emperors new clothes as soon as they have an issue or heaven forbid an accident and they make the word a little bit worse for us.

Updated

I’ve just had it pointed out to me by my mate and long time Creative colleague Darren Fisk, quite how similar the new British Gas identity is to the Age UK identity.

Age UK brand - Is this where the designers of the British Gas logo found their inspiration?

If you look at the background to the brand that was designed by the fabulously named Kitcatt Nohr Digitas (it’s that sort of name that made me want to join the industry) and watch their intro video about how they developed the brand, you can see it’s built on real values, that matter. I think it’s worth watching Paul Kitcatt talking about it here (even though looking at the viewer numbers, no one else has actually bothered):

Llew-Davies-teacher of the year

I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I caught a few minutes of the Pride of Britain Awards and saw an amazingly inspirational teacher – Llew Davies – who won the Teacher of the Year Award. They showed him in his classroom with his pupils who clearly love what he does and how he does it.

What caught my imagination was his enthusiasm and individuality. I love the fact that he cared enough to think about things, look at teaching from the child’s persepective and then went on to name the teacher who inspired him when he was growing up.

It reminded me of the William Arthur Ward quote.

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

It will be many years before we see quite how big an inspiration this brilliant teacher has been to the kids, but I suspect that there will be some brilliant teachers, some amazing scientists and some inspiring people coming straight from his classrooms.

Thanks to Steve Peake at The Guardian for the image. You can read their article here.

So what does the rugby brand have that football really needs, if it is to remain as our national sport of choice?

1. Respect. It’s being spoken a lot in the game of football, but never lived. The level of dissent in football is horrific and can be seen every saturday in kids games up and down the country.

2. Ref’s with authority. Related to the above, but the refs are exceptional, make very few mistakes, rely on their ‘fourth official’, have linesmen who help and do see things and manage a game beautifuly.

3. An advantage rule worth the name. In rugby, the advantage has time to work through, or it comes back to them. It’s a genuine advantage and penalises those who break the rules.

4. Players who care. The England Rugby players look and act like they are genuinely proud to be there. Name one player on the football side whose proudest moment is pulling on his England shirt, other than maybe David Beckham?

5. Players who think about the consequences. During a rugby game, there are fists and fights all over the place. At the end of the game, they are all hugs and hapiness. It’s incredible to see and wonderful. If football could breed better losers, they’d have better winners too.

6. They admit when they get it wrong. Tindall has been a proper fool. No doubt about it, but he did confess and not try and put a press gagging superinjunction, to try and hide it. Getting all the bad news out fast is always the best solution in the long run.

7. The management are more honest too. If their team have been dreadful, they say so. Who believes most of what the football managers say in their post match interviews? It was amusingly refreshing to see Neil Warnock after QPR’s 6-0 thrashing to say they were awful and got thrashed – But he is a rule unto himself and always has been.

So what does this say for the future of the rugby and football brands?

To me, it says that rugby is on the way up as it is a brand built on sustainable and real values. Football is built on money. when this stops rolling, or even slows down, there will be massive casualties and many fans walking away.

Looking at the number of kids on a rugby training pitch these days, i’d be very surprised indeed if it doesn’t become an even bigger participation sport than it is today, into the next generation.

I’m not sure what it says about the Jack Rabbit beer brand or it’s brand values, other than the fact that it is a beer aimed at lads, but I did actually laugh at the end.

I do think that it is funny enough to help establish this as a world renowned beer. Whoever did it should be proud, you have an excellent, world-class and brave client.

The KFC Half Gallon Fizzy Drink - the more you drink the more kids you kill/save

I love the irony of this.

KFC in the US are vowing to help Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) by donating a full dollar to the charity when someone buys one of their $2.99 half-gallon drinks.

Wow, that’s really generous isn’t it? A third of the sale price goes to charity.

But there’s a problem.

Each of these half-gallon drinks contains over 800 calories. Calories as we know, are a major contributor to obesity in any age group and in children in the US it’s a real and growing problem.

Brands like to hang out with other brands as there is generally a values overlay. Both do well from each other. But to try and link to a health related charity with a drink that contains 56 spoonfuls of sugar has to be one of the most crass attempts at buying grace for the brand.

If I ran the JRDF Charity, I would tell KFC to stick it and milk the hell out of the PR opportunity it created.

Thanks to Death and Taxes for the image.

So here are a few ads. Starting with my favourite of them all that is a new US ad.

And then followed by the oldest one I could find. This was written by David Ogilvy – My all time advertising hero and writer of the most influential advertising book of it’s day called ‘Ogilvy on Advertising‘.

When you consider the age of this ad, it is remarkable how many of the visual cues are still used today by the latest generation of VW ad designers.

Think Small - an Early ad by David Ogilvy for VW - Look at how similar the design is to the VW ads of today!

And then one from the 80′s era of shoulder pads and visible wealth with Paula Hamilton as the star of the show

Then a more recent one again that is quite clever and funny, but showed how they were playing the quality and reliability theme out. Maybe to the point of doing it to death.