McCann Worldgroup recently hired Futurebrand (itself) to design a new logo. We’ve been seeing the concept of the dynamic logo for 4 or 5 years now and this seems to be a decent candidate for the treatment but a fairly ho-hum application. Some of the letterforms look sloppy and the materials used seem a bit childish and cartoonish. But it’s much, much better than their old one.
Do we really need to be patronized, however, with the assertion that their company is just too dynamic for a static logo? Please, as if they’re the only company who recruits new talent and goes after new clients. I’m sure the lips of their senior management are stained with just enough Kool Aid to be that credulous. At least with this dynamic new logo they can hire somebody to create better versions of the M and W mark without admitting the first ones were ugly.
It looks like we’re about to start another war kinetic military action in the Middle East. This all happens the same week that the much talked about Burger King advertising account officially goes into review. AdAge does some speculating about who is in the pitch:
A Burger King spokesman said it will conduct a review sans search consultants, adding that it typically conducts its own agency reviews. Agencies with large enough presences and without conflicts that could compete include Dentsu’s McgarryBowen, WPP’s JWT, Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi and independents Wieden & Kennedy and Cramer-Krasselt. While WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather, Brazil, works for franchisees, Ogilvy is otherwise in conflict due to its global Yum Brands business.
In other (more important?) news, Obama is jumping into his second war since he ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan. Last night president Barack Obama appeared on TV to explain to the American people just what he planned to do about the chaos unfolding in Libya. If you merely read the speech and substituted Hussein for Gaddafi you might think you were reading one of Bush’s speeches from 2002. W. James Antle, III has a good angle on this in The American Spectator:
He offered no coherent argument for this intervention that wouldn’t in principle commit us to intervening all over the world, yet at the same time suggested he would not even see this intervention through if it cost too much or took to long. He offered only boilerplate about the nature of the rebellion we are supporting but then refrained from committing to giving the rebels arms.
So which is it? The United States must intervene militarily to avert any humanitarian catastrophe anywhere in the world or else betray our values. But at the same time, we are not going to pursue regime change, we are not responsible for the forces that our interventions unleash and we are not going to stick around as long as that Bush guy did in Iraq. Obama tried to rally the country around the flag as if we are at war, yet continued to pretend we are not at war, refusing to even utter the word. Obama is trying to split the difference, as if war is something that can be handled by focus groups.
It seems as though his moderate supporters are jumping to his defense, but he’s getting hammered by the far left crowd. Will this be the dethroning of King Obama? Doesn’t he know that when it comes to the MIddle East he can’t have it his way? This serves as just another ding in Obama’s armor as unemployment surges ahead.
