Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for November 2012

Rebranding for ITV Brings a New Logo Design

ITV is trying to find its positioning in the U.K. television market, and a new logo is the first visual element of its recent rebranding effort. In an effort to get away from the conservative logo that has been used since 2006, ITV launched a new colorful logo in a cursive typeface that the company hopes will make the brand seem friendlier. You can see the old and new logos below.

itv logo old and new

The rebranding will affect all of ITV’s properties and will give each its own “big channel idea” as Andrew Laughlin of Digital Spy reports. For example, ITV2 will become the “home of infectious entertainment” and ITV3 will be the “keeper of ITV’s treasured and timeless drama.” ITV4 will become the “home of sport and cult classics” or “the man club.” CITV will get its own version of the new logo which will be, “yellowy-orange with playful idents that burp and fart and do other things kids love.”

You can see some of the applications of the new logo design below.

itv logo screen application

itv logo screen application 2

The strategy behind the rebranding was explained in a press release that accompanied the logo launch last week:

“In an ever more crowed market place, both domestically and internationally, the need for a modern, flexible brand identity that connects with our viewers and customers has never been more important. We are really excited to soon be unveiling a new identity that is as up-to-date, and relevant as our content. Big, bold and creatively ambitious, it will be true to our DNA as a brand at the heart of popular culture.”

The new logo forms the basis of all ITV’s branding domestically and internationally, and is a warm, bold design based on a formalised version of human handwriting, comprising of five colours, in its static state.

When the logo appears on coloured background, such as marketing images for ITV programmes – it will adapt and change according to the background colour scheme of the image. This colour picking technique means that the logo can be dynamic, shifting tone along with the content, reflecting and blending with the mood of different shows.

Within the ITV broadcast business, the family of UK channels will all have a new on-air look, with ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, and CiTV receiving new colour schemes, clearer brand propositions, and accompanying updated brand identities.

To strengthen affinity between the overall brand, and the network’s flagship channel – ITV1 from January 2013 will be known as simply, ITV.

Constituent sub brands within the ITV main channel will also receive new on-air brand identities and colour schemes, such as ITV News and ITV Sport; and the ITV Player and online estate will also be rebranded.

Overall, this rebranding effort seems to be a positive change. Entertainment brands, particularly television networks, have been moving toward this type of fluid and flexible logo design in recent years, and the ITV rebranding should help to position it against its closest competitors.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the ITV rebranding and new logo design.

New angles on responsible CSR communication

Ages ago I bookmarked an article on the Ibero-American CSR Blog about how the media engage with CSR.

The guts of the article come from the book La Responsabilidad Social en América Latina (Social Responsibility in Latin America) by Mercedes Korin, founder of the Argentinian firm Mapeo de Promotores de RSE.

In the book Mercedes highlights how the media tend to be uncritical in their coverage of CSR, celebrating practices which are responsible and sustainable and tending to ignore those which are irresponsible and unsustainable.

There’s a very close relationship between PR and the media and while all journalists will tell you they report fact fairly and without bias, the reality is that much of the business news agenda is driven by companies seeking to portray themselves in the best possible light.

So yes the media probably should be more critical of business activities, but a business should also be more self critical … more aware of how its policies and procedures affect its staff and stakeholders and how analytical it is being of its own behaviour.

In order to encourage this kind of analysis within the the media, Mercedes suggests four areas which should be addressed and they form the basis for the four angles I mention below.

[Read more…] about New angles on responsible CSR communication

Amazon Brand Pages Launched Ahead of Holiday Shopping Season

Amazon brand pages are here and just in time for the holiday shopping season. As part of the new Amazon Marketing Services, brands can use free self-service tools to encourage consumers to learn about brands and buy products through dedicated landing pages (Amazon Pages). Brands can also share social content to existing and prospective customers using Amazon Posts, and tracking performance is available using Amazon Analytics.

Amazon offers three page templates so brands can choose the best design to reach its customers depending on current marketing goals. For example, a brand could showcase a wide variety of products, emphasize posts to hype a specific message, event, or product line, or use a template that blends social media along with a group of products.

While it might seem like just one more online destination that brands have to manage, Amazon Pages actually offer great benefits to brands. First, they’re free and easy to use. Second, they integrate seamlessly with Amazon making one-click purchasing through a site consumers are already comfortable with extremely simple. Third, they allow brands to marry product images and descriptions with social content. Amazon hopes that the Amazon Pages benefits and features will out-perform similar offerings from Facebook.

For brands that sell on Amazon, creating an Amazon Page seems like a must-try opportunity. Keep in mind, this is the first iteration of Amazon Pages, and more features are sure to be added in the future. Already, Amazon has teased about giving brands insight into their audiences’ shopping behaviors, which would be huge for brands to improve marketing ROI. Additional online buzz has already started about the introduction of “buy” buttons in Amazon Posts that also appear when those posts are published on Facebook.

How does Amazon benefit from Amazon Pages? Tim Peterson of Adweek explains that Amazon Pages will deepen the relationships between Amazon and retailers. Since Amazon is a competitor for many retail brands, giving them official branded landing pages on Amazon should help to reduce the amount of cannibalization from resellers. Some large retailers already have Amazon brand stores, so Amazon Pages seem like a natural next step.

You can get all of the details about Amazon Brand Pages here and find the user guide, user agreement, and content guidelines here.

What do you think of Amazon Brand Pages? Does your brand have an Amazon Page yet?

Turning Interns into Recruits

Great internships can make great people and the difference in attitude between your average undergraduate before and after eight weeks in industry is remarkable. Quality internships don’t just give students a flavour of the working world, they can really bring out attributes that are indispensable to large companies and, if you’ve invested time and money in your intern, it makes sense that you want to keep hold of them!

Once a good intern leaves and goes back to the world of university, though, they are back at the mercy of the graduate recruitment rush and a good portion of interns move elsewhere when they finally graduate. So, save from offering them a job, how can you make sure you turn interns into recruits?

Keep them Working

Over an eight or twelve week period it’s quite likely that your intern will have got involved with an ongoing project or perhaps even started up something new of their own. Don’t let that go to waste; why not keep your intern working remotely? Social media and marketing initiatives can easily be run remotely and students will be glad to keep a tie with their potential new employer.

Use them as Recruiters

One clever way of keeping an intern interested is to ask them to help you in finding the next batch of recruits. Interns can be involved in writing web copy to attract students like themselves and at careers fairs and events. Of course, this does rely on there being something at the other end for the student so make sure you’re appropriately rewarding their efforts.

Keep in Touch

Communication between managers and juniors is sometimes tough, but before your intern leaves it’s important to ensure a lasting connection. The exit interview is a vital tool to gauge your intern’s expectations and aspirations going forward, but it’s not enough on its own. If you’re really interested in keeping an intern, make sure you stay in good contact online and don’t be afraid to talk business; a good intern will be more than happy to know he or she is wanted back.

The hardest thing about turning interns into recruits is making sure you keep them engaged. Staying silent for eight months won’t endear your interns to your way of working so make sure you’re using all the right tools to keep them interested. Ideally, giving your interns remote responsibility is a great way of keeping them active, but if that’s not possible you should use all the online tools you can to stay in touch.

More on Mandatory CSR in the EU

Back in January I wrote about how I believed mandatory CSR reporting was going to come into the EU’s regulatory frame work under the auspices of the Single Market Act (SMA), which is on schedule for adoption by the end of this year.

In brief, the EU has said it by 2014 it will provide a “legislative proposal on the transparency of the social and environmental information provided by businesses” which apply to large companies, such as those with over 1,000 employees.  Read New CSR Regulation Coming Your Way for more details.

Now, it may have skipped your notice but this month saw the 20th anniversary of the EU’s Single Market (the Maastricht Treaty, when the EEC became the EC).  To celebrate it the EU launched a debate entitled “Europe, Wake Up!  We will only return to growth and prosperity if we complete the the Single Market”, including this video and this Google hangout.

In the best tradition of Hollywood slasher/romcom/fantasy flicks (delete as appropriate) it also launched SMA The Sequel, more properly known as the Single Market Act II.

This addresses several key areas for which the European Commission considers to be priorities for rapid adoption to try and stimulate the EU out of the current economic crisis.  Proposals in these areas will be put forward in 2012-14.

[Read more…] about More on Mandatory CSR in the EU

BP to Launch Ads to Boost Positive Brand Sentiment

bp oil truckIt’s been nearly three years since the catastrophic April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred, but for the company behind the tragic events, BP, negative brand sentiment is still rampant.

Despite agreeing to a $4.5 billion settlement, the highest fine in United States history, consumers still aren’t willing to forgive the company and brand that was responsible for spilling millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 people and far more wildlife.

Within a few weeks of the April 2010 oil spill, research reports from various companies and organizations revealed just how far the BP brand image had been tarnished by the events.  According to a USA Today/Gallup poll at the time, 34% of the respondents rated BP’s response to the spill as “poor” and 39% rated it as “very poor.”  Only 6% rated BP’s response as “very good,” and 18% rated it “good.”

In June 2010, YouGov and The Economist conducted a separate survey. When respondents were asked whether or not they trusted BP to “do the right thing in stopping the oil spill and cleaning it up” the results showed that negative sentiment was still the predominant feeling that consumers felt towards the BP brand.:

  • 27% had no trust in BP at all.
  • 24%dvery little trust in BP.
  • 24% had only some trust in BP.
  • 13% had quite a bit of trust in BP.
  • 6% had a great deal of trust in BP.

Results from an August 2010 poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications revealed that 66% of respondents disapproved (40% disapproved “strongly”), “of the way BP was handling the oil spill that was caused by the rig it was operating in the Gulf of Mexico.”  That was down from the 83% who disapproved in a June 2010 poll, but it was still far from giving BP any peace of mind that the oil spill was behind them yet even though oil was no longer gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Fast forward to 2012, and BP launched its first television advertising in the United Kingdom since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010 when it rolled out a campaign to promote its sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Now, BP plans to expand its strategy of hyping its efforts to “do good” through a new advertising push with a goal to boost positive brand sentiment.

According to Marketing Magazine, BP will launch new television, print, and online advertising to “make people feel more positive” about BP by focusing on the company’s cultural sponsorships, which include partnerships with the Royal Opera House and British Museum.

Will it work? This effort will require a very sensitive tone, but when the campaign launches in March 2013, nearly three years will have passed since the tragedy that damaged the BP brand occurred. It’s certainly time for the brand to make a strategic effort to revitalize its image. Brand sentiment for the BP brand won’t change unless the company finds a way to regain some sense of trust with consumers, and that won’t happen unless the company gives them a reason to trust the brand again. Will ads hyping feel-good partnerships do the trick? It’s  a start. Hopefully, there will be more to come from the effort after the March 2013 roll-out.

What do you think?

Image: Graham Richardson