A few weeks ago I  attended a benefit for the Matthew Shepard Foundation and was given a purple wristband that says Erase Hate. I rarely wear wristbands but I support this cause and the message on the wristband, “Erase Hate.” For the last 3 weeks I have sported this purple wristband that promotes tolerance- a cause I can definitely get behind. And, in those three weeks, I have had more people ask me about this purple ring of silicone than any other piece of jewelry I have ever worn. It got me to thinking about the power of wristbands but also wondering if that power has been diluted by a proliferation of wristbands promoting causes from ending racism to awareness of every major disease you can think of.

Silicone wrist bands originated from baller bands- rubber bands that street basketball players wear on their wrists. According to http://www.balleridwristbands.com/the-baller-id-bands-history baller bands came into being after the NBA banned players from wearing jewelry during basketball games for safety reasons.  An entrepreneur named Ave Maria Green (no I am not making up that name) developed the idea of substituting silicone bands with messages that would allow the players to express themselves.

Wristbands first gained widespread attention with Lance Armstrong’s “Live strong” yellow band that he wore for the 1996 Tour de France. Yellow was chosen since it is the Tour de France color and the saying is the motto he lived by while battling cancer. Five million bands were initially made and sold with proceeds going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I believe that Nike also had a hand in helping fund the initial lot. Once he won his 6th Tour de France the bands were a hot commodity, millions were reprinted and his Foundation reported that 400,000  new orders a day flooded into the charity website. To date over 50 million bands have been sold with the Foundation keeping 77 cents for every dollar band sold… you do the math!

Armstrong may have been the first to use this silicone band to raise money or awareness for a cause. But soon after other organizations from Oxfam (white band – Make Poverty History) to an anti- bullying blue band put out by the British Department for Education and Skills came on the scene. Today you can find collectible wristbands  that come from the Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard, wristbands for the Boy Scouts (be prepared), for every major sports team, and for every disease known to man. Colors are assigned to causes- yellow for Support our Troops, pink for Breast Cancer Awareness, green for environmental concerns, white for Right to Lifers, Blue for anti-bullying and prostate cancer on down the line.There is even a wrist band for Egg Allergies and asbestos awareness. And,  recently there was a huge fanfare and scandal around teenagers sporting a breast cancer wrist band that said “I love Boobies’ to school. At least five states have banned wearing wristbands sporting causes to school unless they are turned inside out.

Some current wristbands: Don’t be a clot: to help raise awareness of Protein S Deficiency and Thrombophilia. Orange bands for I support the open web. Red bands to help raise international awareness of the current political  situation in Burma. Green wristbands to support freedom in Iran, Multi-colored bands being sold to help wounded warriors hurt in combat. And the list goes on.

The question remains; does the proliferation of wrist bands water down their effectiveness? I don’t think so. Clearly few wristbands will ever get the visibility of Live Strong or Breast Cancer  (due in part to the branding of the color pink). But they still serve a purpose. I like to think of them as mainstream guerrilla marketing- they  afford the person wearing the band the opportunity to talk about the cause they support, explain what the bracelet motto is all about and essentially do a one on one sales pitch. They are still an effective fund raising tool with costs ranging from $1 up to $50 for high rollers. They are a fairly inexpensive method of promoting an issue and as we all know there an individual interaction can have as much impact as paid promotion since there is a human element attached. And I believe that the impact can be viral in nature if bands are passed on.

So at least for now, I will continue to wear my purple band, and will take every opportunity I can to talk up my cause. It may not solve the problems of intolerance- but at least it is a start.

Sports and branding: I am passionate about the former and I love to consult with my clients on the latter. So I can’t help but be fixated on the recent buzz pertaining to LeBron James and the so-called “hit” on his brand equity ever since he made, in my opinion, the ill-advised television special to announce he was switching from his hometown team to the Miami Heat.

To set some context for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about—LeBron James, the all star player formerly of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and probably the most celebrated basketball star since Michael Jordan, went on national television in July and announced that, as a free agent, he was leaving the team that drafted him seven years ago. In his mind, joining the Miami franchise with a few other all stars already in place, would give him the best chance to win an NBA championship.

Now I’m cool with athletes switching teams when they are free agents. Happens all the time and it is the prerogative of any free agent to go where they feel most comfortable. But the manner in which he made the announcement made headlines all over the sports world­, and it was seen by many as a selfish and backstabbing move against his home state (he grew up and attended school in nearby Akron, Ohio). Here is a brief clip of the announcement:

Shortly thereafter, the backlash started. According to Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, “LeBron’s brand will take a $1 billion hit, give or take a few bucks.” While that statement may be a slight exaggeration, a recent poll about LeBron by the Q Score company—the Q Score is a measurement of the familiarity and appeal of a brand, company, celebrity, or television show used in the United States­—shows LeBron’s popularity rating has plummeted since his announcement and is currently below the average sports celebrity. I won’t use this blog to get into the specific calculations­—see a good CNBC article for details.

But I found it really interesting to see how Nike, a key LeBron sponsor, took the opportunity to not only come to his aid in what appears to be an attempt to help him repair some of his brand image, but also make sure they are protecting one of their biggest assets. Weiden & Kennedy did the spot and I personally love it. It is somewhat bold, in your face, and guaranteed to grab attention—just like Nike always does. Take a look:

Now I can’t say that this ad will start the path to brand rating recovery (although I think it is great for Nike), but considering what other elite athletes have done over the years­—adultery, domestic violence, using banned and illicit substances—this sports fan gives LeBron credit for staying clean and living by his sponsor’s famous tag “just do it.” Yeah, he made a mistake in how he delivered his decision to move on. But I believe his success on the court will ultimately define his brand which I am sure will be memorable and plenty lucrative, to say the least.

The 2010 W³ Awards program honors creative excellence on the web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning sites, videos and marketing programs. Sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, entry into this global award program is accessible to the biggest agencies, the smallest firms, and everyone in between. Grafik’s Gold was in the category of  “Agency Self-Promotion.”

At Grafik, we are particularly pleased with the award because the new site, launched in early 2009, was a dramatic online evolution of our own brand that included a new identity, a comprehensive portfolio, and an integrated team that has grown to include interactive talent from some of the nation’s top agencies and consumer brands.

In keeping with Grafik’s sweet spot—building unique and branded experiences—Grafik.com is a non-traditional one-page site that provides a surprisingly fresh and intuitive user interface that also presents some unique challenges for page rendering, navigation, and search engine optimization. A client-side font rendering engine and a healthy dose of jQuery were called in to address these and many other issues–and to show off our technology chops.

Internally and externally, the response to the new site has been positive. We like that. And, now and then, it’s nice to win an award for our efforts.

Grafik Website: www.grafik.com

I think most people would agree that a brand is someone’s gut feeling about an organization, or company. In other words, it’s intangible, individual, and very personal. That’s why managing a brand is so tricky: it’s really managing expectations. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the reaction to Gap’s new logo was so overwhelmingly negative.

Millions of consumers have adopted Gap as an essential facet of their own personal brands. And it reflects more on them than it does the company. It’s like the old maxim, “Your brand doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to your customers.” That’s not to say that the company doesn’t have the right to change, or evolve the logo, but there has to be a really good reason.

Over the past week or so, as the company was responding to the overwhelming criticism, one Gap executive noted that the company is changing, and management was hoping the new logo would represent that change. But what is that change? And shouldn’t that change have been perceptible to consumers before Gap made any effort to reflect it?

Gap’s new logo failed because there appears to have been no real rationale for it. I imagine the lousy economy and decreased sales might have been the catalysts, but even these don’t support sweeping changes to the most significant visual expression of a major consumer brand.

In the end, this entire ordeal will serve as a cautionary tale for other brands, and a proof point for anyone seeking to illustrate the power of social media. But for now, we can only scratch our heads and wonder what Gap was thinking. If the short-lived logo represented anything, it conveyed a sense of uncertainty, carelessness and frustration — all of which is painfully revealing for a retail company that has seen better days.

In partnership with the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF), Johns Hopkins Medical Center and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Grafik is developing a patient portal to support the National Proactive Surveillance Network’s (NPSN) long-term study of the efficacy of nonintervention for certain types of prostate cancers and patients.

Participants in the NPSN program must visit their doctor for initial consultation and for ongoing monitoring if they are eligible and accepted into the program. The portal will allow prospective patients to learn more about the program, and allow in-program patients to fill out various intake forms and surveys, manage their medical data, and ultimately, communicate and collaborate with doctors and other patients.

In addition to Johns Hopkins and Cedars-Sinai, additional institutions will join the NPSN after the portal’s launch in early 2011. By growing the study population, consolidating the study data, and exposing that data to the research community, the program and the web portal will help shed new light on disease progression and will ultimately provide better screening and evaluation tools that will prevent the overtreatment of prostate cancer.

PCF experts calculate that an estimated $3 billion in annual treatment costs might have been saved between 1986–2005 if the ability to distinguish between lethal and nonlethal cases of prostate cancer were available to healthcare professionals.

“Part of Grafik’s mission, as a company, is to collaborate with partners who do important work,” said Grafik Principal and Managing Director, Lance Wain. “We are thrilled to be part of this project and look forward to the contributions this tool will make towards science and disease management.”

For more information call Teddi Alyce Segal at Grafik 703-299-4507.

I have always looked forward each year to the announcement of the MacArthur Fellowships. This award- also known as the “genius grant” is awarded to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” MacArthur Fellows are given $500,000 in unrestricted monies so they can keep on doing what they have been doing without having to worry about funds. Every year the list includes some of the most amazing people in all walks of life, but this year, finally, it included 2 people that are intimately involved with type.

Matthew Carter- one of the old school of type designers has not stayed old school. In addition to designing well  over 60 typeface families and over 250 individual fonts,  he recently finished work designing fonts that would be legible on low resolution hand held devices.

The second person to be awarded a fellowship is Nicholas Benson, a stone carver and calligrapher who has worked on carving letter forms into stone at such notable places as the National Gallery of Art, the National World War II Memorial. and the soon to be opened Dr. Martin Luther King National Memorial National Gallery of Art. In these days of computer generated fonts, Mr. Benson is notable for painstakingly carving every serif into granite or marble- one letter at a time.

So few people today notice typefaces let alone understand the difference between Stone Serif or Meta. Few recognize what proper leading or letterspacing can add to legibility and most believe that it is an art that anyone with a computer and fonts can master. These two notable fellows are a testament to the part typography can play in our world today. They are two examples of two craftsmen that love and labor over letters, and reading the list of people awarded “genius grants” today I felt a burst of pride in our profession and for all of those who look at type as art, not gray matter.

We have been working with a very successful business that has been around for about 30 years. As part of a strategic plan we recommended that the company revisit their logo. And some very interesting questions were raised. How critical is a logo as part of a brand? The company has been successful as a mom and pop organization, has never done marketing, and wants to increased visibility.  Will upgrading their logo add revenue or effect their bottom  line positively?  In this case, the company has a huge public facing infrastructure that would have to be changed; unlike some companies that would only have to revisit marketing materials and corporate stationary if its logo changed, this company could have as much as a $3-5  million price tag linked to changing a mark. Any logo change results in retooling a fleet of trucks, issuing new uniforms, new crates and new boxes in addition to building signage, business papers and marketing materials. Not an insignificant change.

It got me to thinking- how much can a logo really change things? My overall philosophy has been and continues to be that a logo is only a small part of a brand’s identity. It is  signature or a punctuation mark- it is never the whole story. I often counsel clients- especially new start ups- not to spend too much time and money on logos unless there is a budget to fully support the mark. By that I mean a sum of money that is large enough to imprint a new logo on the viewers’ minds. Normally  a logo becomes a strong foundation to a much larger brand exercise. And as many times as not we may only update a mark rather than create a new one if we feel that its contribution is not significant. In this case, the mark is seminal to the brand and very visible, and the current mark is somewhat problematic.

I started to look inward at our own mark to see if Grafik’s logo, untouched, could have carried us to where we are today. The flat out answer is “No”- but then again- we are playing in a visual space, so the way we portray our organization has ramifications.

Our first logo- created in the mid-seventies was created by a former partner, Alex Berry. The seventies were characterized by an abundance of warm colors and a love affair with san serif type faces- both apparent in this early version of the Grafik stationary. Sidenote- we thought we were being very hip by always using the logo rather large ( horsey now that I look at it) and always vertically. Our presentation materials were non-existent, and as a start up we created our identity on the fly.

After about 6 years we knew we needed a refresh. The company was migrating from a small boutique design firm of three or four people to a group of about 8-10 designers. We felt compelled to redesign the mark to look more “professional”. While this is a bad scan from a really old piece of stationary- this was before computers- we went for a much more conservative look.Typical of the time- the mid seventies- we opted for a soft moss green and a warm brown- subdued and subtle. Everything about the new look was restrained. We still really only viewed our brand as a logo and the way it was applied to stationary and business cards and did not really understand that it had to be used consistently. Along the way, the foundations of our brand, strong thinking, creative excellence and great client service were starting to be formed. I’m not sure that at that point we even understood who we really were- but we started to understand who we wanted to be.

By the 80′s I knew I needed to make a bold move. Our company was growing, our reputation was spreading and with the advent of the computer, our business model was evolving. I threw out a number of ideas to some of my creative staff- and decided we would have an internal competition to redesign the new look. I fully expected that one of the art directors would clinch a new look and feel. Low and behold, Dave Collins- at the time one of our youngest designers and now one of our partners, came in with the winning logo- a complete departure from where we had been.  It had the swagger that our studio needed- a fresh new look and feel that symbolized  a company on the move. Bold, yet restrained, we moved all of our materials to red and black- from our proposals, our pitch books to our stationary. For the first time we were getting compliments on the packaging of our proposals and on the quality of our communications. And for the first time we were starting to understand how a brand can really extend its reach.

But nothing ever stays the same. Dave’s logo carried us for about 5-6  years and in that time Grafik was growing from a design firm that had a good local reputation to a firm that had a solid reputation for branding intitiatives regionally and to some extent nationally. In the mid 90′s we realized that our good old red and black logo was dated and we went for a more refined elegant look. We were working with a lot of fashion and luxury clients and it was important to have a contemporary identity. Again we looked to one of our younger designers, Jonathan Amen, to give us a mark that had a relationship to our existing logo.

Jonathan not only revisited our mark, but he pushed us to look at an entirely new color palette and a new family of fonts. Gone was red and black as the dominant color palette. In- a soft green, an orange, a light blue and a switch from coated papers to uncoated papers. The new logo was reinforced with a series of ultra light circles that was a more sophisticated treatment than the heavier logo from the 80s. Our presentations became increasingly sophisticated but one thing was lacking. While the mark produced beautifully on paper, embossed or stamped, it was not as successful on the web. As more and more of our work became interactive we realized that we needed to capitalize on our web presence and that our current logo had limitations.

A combination of designers including Mike Mateos, Ivan Hooker and Gregg Glaviano  joined to create a new mark.They kept aspects of the original “G” created by Dave Collins, and transitioned the color of the mark to a more orange-red. The new “G”, while evocative of its predecessors, stands on its own and marks the transition of Grafik from design firm to branding agency. Our logo is an accurate depiction of the Grafik brand that still values intelligence, creative and service excellence. This time, with 20 years of branding under our belt we understood the importance of brand consistency and so we changed everything from the website, to email signatures and business templates to the interior of our offices. We launched the new logo with an online video and built internal consensus by making the logo change the focus of our annual company t-shirt.

Back to the original question. Could Grafik have grown as much if we had kept the original logo? In a profession that is judged in part by style and execution, it would have been hard to use a mark created in the late 70s to symbolize the organization we have become today. Looking at successful brands there are very few that have not had to adapt to new trends, new technologies, new ways of presenting themselves. A mark that might have worked a dozen of years ago may lack the energy, sophistication or professionalism to carry the company forward. Now we even have to consider the mark’s proportions to be successful on a mobile device.

So back to the dilemma faced by my current client. The question that I posed to him was not if the old logo matched to goals and positioning that we set forth for his company today. The question posed was would the logo take the company where it wanted to be 5, 10, 20 years from now. The answer was no. It was a hard answer given the costs associated with a change. Nevertheless, it was the right answer.

As some of you already know, last Wednesday Google released an update to their search product, called Google Instant, which displays the potential search results page as you type. So, essentially, this new enhancement takes the predictive search interface (where Google took what you were typing and suggested potential search queries for you) one step further by adding the results to those predictive searches.

For example, prior to the release of Google Instant, if I were searching on the term “Redskins Win,” Google would begin to suggest search queries that start with “R-E-D” as seen in the screenshot below.

Now, as I begin to type “R-E-D” Google displays what the search results would be for the first search query in their predictive search suggestions as shown below.

The goal of Google Instant is that it’s supposed to save all of us seconds with each search by guiding us towards the search we really want and save us the trouble of clicking on search or hitting return. Personally, I find it a little annoying as I know what I want to search on and don’t like being interrupted as I’m typing – which is what it is basically doing. So, I will turn it off, (like I did with their personalized search results feature) and you can too if you don’t like it, by clicking on the link next to the search box.

So how does displaying the search results page as you type impact SEO if you are a business depending on SEO for customers? Well, some have gone as far as declaring that this move has “killed SEO.” But claims like this piss me off as much as some of the recent East Coast hurricane forecasts have (another touchy subject with me) since they are ignorant and sensationalistic. However, wild claims like this, while really stirring up the hornets nest, also force people to really think through what Google has done here, and how it impacts SEO marketing strategy.

Because seriously, as some of the more savvier search marketers and even Google’s product manager are pointing out, Google Instant doesn’t kill anything, instead, it forces us as marketers to evolve as the technology evolves. Which is a good thing people! (Unless, quite honestly, you’re lazy). Now, with Google Instant, we’re able to gain insight into tangential keywords that we may have missed before.

For example, say I was a beer aficionado and wanted to optimize my site around “craft brew” keywords. If I start typing “Craft brew” into the Google search field, I now see that “craft brewers alliance” is a top suggested keyword which I might not have known that before. And if this term is relevant to my audience, I may want to have a page on my site devoted to this “alliance” to capture any of my potential audience that might get sidetracked by clicking on this term.

This approach is just one of many new opportunities that have been created for SEOs by this release. I think this Faster Times article actually does a good job explaining a few others and also explains pretty clearly how the fundamentals of SEO have not changed. At the end of the day, it’s all about providing relevant content to a general target audience, and not unique individuals. And while Google Instant may change search behavior, by sending a potential customer down a different relevant pathway than they may have gone down prior to Instant’s release, Google is giving marketers the same opportunity to KNOW what that pathway is and allows us (and you) to provide that same content to our customers.

Having said all of this, in reality, it’s still too early to tell what the broader impact of Google Instant is going to be… and I WISH more people would admit that they don’t know, rather than making grand proclamations that hurt more than they help. But I guess this could be said about many headlines in general, and without these proclamations, we sometimes don’t have much to complain about. And on a Monday morning after a Redskins win over Dallas, I really don’t have much to complain about!

Yes, as is the case in most references to this famous line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, I have butchered the quote, but the sentiment is there (you can see the original quote here, and the Blazing Saddles rendition here). In fact, watching the famous scene on YouTube has prompted me to fill our lonely Netflix queue with some classics.

But seriously, I’m slowly getting over the novelty of earning badges. I mean, I did feel some satisfaction becoming the mayor of my son’s daycare, and overseeing the cleaners around the corner ensures that I always get my shirts back with no starch, but I’m ready for something tangible. Reward me for being a frequent customer and even more so, reward me for encouraging my friends to visit your shop more often.

Well, from the sound of this article on Mashable yesterday, brands are finally seeing the value in the location-based social networks. And the fact that they have created the “level up” concept so that you are rewarded for your extreme loyalty (St. Elmos, are you listening?) is outstanding. My only concern is that Brightkite, while an early leader in the geolocation services, has fallen way behind Foursquare and Gowalla in brand recognition. So, without the user clout, will the brands stay engaged? Or, will Foursquare follow Brightkite’s lead and encourage their brand partners to provide more value to their users?

As with all things, time will tell and I’ll be watching closely, hoping that perhaps I can score a free coffee or two, or if I’m lucky, perhaps a discount on daycare. Ok, now that’s just crazy.

But we are not looking for the run of the mill typical sort.  In fact those type of folks generally don’t last too long here.  We have a very unique culture.  We have people who have been here 10, 15 and over 20 years. We look for that special spark. We look for people who have that “je ne sais quois” (that’s french for something you can’t put you finger on but you know they are something special.)  If you are meek, timid or shy – you won’t last a minute.  If you don’t know what the hell you are doing – it won’t work. If you can’t take a joke, fuggettaboutit!!  This is not the place for the faint of heart. We are perfectionists, we are weird, we are cool (some of us) we are diverse, we are liberal, we are conservative, we are just about everything. We strive to be the best.  We honor the work and we respect each other. If you would like to work in that kind of environment – give us a call, cause we want to hear from you.  Right now we have immediate openings for an account executive, an interactive designer, a marketing assistant and an administrative assistant. We have just won TONS of new business. We are all pumped around here – it’s a good time to join the family. Get in touch with Teddi and then I will get you to the right person depending on what you are applying for. teddi@grafik.com