Old logo

Yesterday the Daily Mail reported on the new Foreign Office logo. “Miliband wastes £80,000 changing official font on Foreign Office logo,” trilled the headline in brilliantly venomous Mail style.

Yes it’s true that the two logos aren’t very different. And if you just glanced at the story you would probably agree that Miliband has indeed wasted £80,000 of tax payers’ money.

But I loved this story because it was a perfect summary of so many of the issues, prejudices and hoary old chestnuts facing the design industry today.

Coley Porter Bell has beefed up its client services offer with the hiring of former Goodyear national marketing manager Naomi Farrugia.

In her role as business director Farrugia will run CPB’s international Coca Cola and Pernod Ricard business.

She joins from integrated communications agency Rapier where she was business director running the Virgin media account.

Farrugia, an Australian by birth, previously spent three years working for Goodyear in Australia where she managed the Goodyear retail brand and was responsible for rebranding and repositioning the Goodyear outlets as Goodyear Autocare due to reflect the breadth of its service offering.

“Of all the things I’ve done in marketing, I am fascinated most by branding because brand creation determines what all the other marketing activities will be. I look forward to the challenge of improving the standing of a project based business,” said Farrugia.

Said Coley Porter Bell chief executive Vicky Bullen: “Naomi has a rare combination of wide ranging client side marketing experience, different types of marketing communications experience, brand insight and fantastic people skills. She will help us as we take our brand world offer to clients.”

Thursday's debate

Last Thursday, despite the cloud of volcanic ash that grounded flights throughout Europe, one of the cornerstones of the American electoral process made its way across the pond: the televised debate.

For the first time in British politics, leaders of the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat parties gathered in front of a studio audience to share their views on hot button issues, including the economy, immigration, education, and the military. Brown, Cameron and Clegg stood toe to toe for ninety minutes, and beamed their way into the homes of 9.4 million people nationwide.

It remains to be seen whether debates will be a feature of all future general elections, but it is worth noting the migration of a practice that has defined American political campaigns for the past fifty years. And with Barack Obama’s groundbreaking campaign in such recent memory, it will be interesting to see if more of the principles that worked so well for him will translate here.

One of the most compelling aspects of Obama’s campaign was the effective use of design. In fact, an entire book has been written on the subject. The introduction explains, “For the first time in American politics, a candidate used art and design to bring together the American people—capturing their voices in a visual way.”

The Obama logo

From logo to website to pamphlet, the visual language worked incredible hard to embody the core principles of the candidate’s platform: hope, change, and unity. Scott Thomas, Design Director of the campaign, explains, “One thing that design can solve through consistency is it can establish a certain sense of balance.”

The campaign’s commitment to design consistency, however, was refreshingly modern – no overbearing brand rules or restrictions to abide by. The website’s downloads page allowed people to take ownership of the design work, creating their own websites, t-shirts, and signs. It was open source design at its best, contributing to the greatest grass roots movements in this blogger’s lifetime.

And so it will be interesting to see how Britain’s election season plays out, and whether design can do for candidates here what it did for Barack Obama in 2008. We’ve seen them present their own personal brands on television, but can they bring them to life in a visually compelling way over the next few weeks? We at CPB will certainly be watching.

Are you psyched about May 6th? You know, The General Election. Are you really looking forward to it? Are you enthusiastically engaged with the thinking, the campaigning, the issues, the people, the ideas?

Thought not.

Sadly you are not alone in your indifference. Over the past few weeks it has become increasingly apparent that there is a near universal lack of engagement in the country with our upcoming quadrennial vote-fest.

Even antagonism would be preferable. At least that implies some interest. But instead we seem to be in the grip of the most severe outbreak of mass apathy we have seen for decades, perhaps ever. And we cant help wondering why?

I was strolling home through Paddington station the other day when my eye was caught and my gob was well and truly smacked by a colourful little six sheet: ‘VJJ. What do you call yours?’ it read.

What? I looked again, Yes it really was talking about vaginas. And just in case there were any lingering doubts in my mind, there, running along the bottom (of the poster) was a web site address: www.loveyourvagina.com.

What was it?  Porn?  But surely that would say ‘lovesomeoneelse’svagina.com’.  Besides the graphics were too wholesome. A ‘joke’?  Not funny.  A public health message? Perhaps.  It just wasn’t clear.  But I was intrigued, so when I got home I logged on to find that the site sells ‘mooncups’ – a new, or rather very, very old form of sanitary protection for women.

So you could argue that it did its job. But I believe this concept is an enormous leap for the average woman to make … even the web site says “I bet you winced when you saw it”, personally I winced when I saw the advertising because it seeks to overly trivialise what could potentially be an interesting move on from tampons.

The homepage was a brilliant and utterly fascinating feature, that is built on the same insight as the ad campaign. It asked visitors to let them know what they call their vaginas. Extraordinarily, there are more than 2,000 different words and phrases used and no clear ‘winner’ among them.

Now you might say that it merely reflects the interests of our society. After all the eskimos reputedly have 40 words for snow. I call my son’s genitals his ‘willy’. But the fact that we have no consensus around what to call to female genitalia suggests that this is an issue that we are afraid to get to grips with. So the insight is good, perhaps the execution is a little trivial or dare I say “easy”.

It’s often a criticism that this kind of communication is developed by men, because the insights seem misplaced or patronising. This at least is a good attempt at being straight talking and open about sanpro but it still smacks of being sensationalised by men in a bid to woo award juries, rather than connect with women.

But what of the Mooncup itself? According to the site, the average woman uses 12,000 sanitary products in her life which can be replaced by one Mooncup.  So there’s clearly a major environmental benefit. And don’t forget issues surrounding toxic shock syndrome. So on a rational level an external sanpro product seems a good idea.

But attitudes to sanpro are culturally ingrained. We don’t want to see it, hear about it, talk about it or be reminded of it. The conventional tampon which literally internalises the issue is an apt metaphor for our cultural approach.

I have to say I share that approach. While the ads attempt to be a clever way of highlighting an incredibly sensitive topic in an engaging and controversial way, the product itself is just too strident. Reusing and repeatedly cleaning one of these things is just too much of an adjustment for me to make. Most of us are simply not ready to become earth mothers revelling in our menstrual juices.

And whilst this can be seen as being brave, creative and controversial with an arresting tone of voice, is this really what is required to sell women on an entirely new approach to sanitary protection? I don’t think so.

The travesty of Mooncup is that it’s a really nice idea, but it requires advertising that re-educates women, rather than attempts to titillate with concepts like ‘noo-noo’, ‘gina’, ‘home entertainment centre’ or what ever else you want to call it.

Easter means Easter eggs. But increasingly Easter eggs mean Easter trauma in our household.

First they plug straight into the tragedy of global warming. These days even the smallest egg consumes enough resources to melt a polar ice cap with their wanton use of packaging materials. You know the drill: encase egg in foil; insert wrapped egg into suit of protective plastic armour; protect protective armour with cardboard cage.

And then there are the even greater surgical tragedies that ensue when you try to open the bloody thing. Try to claw it open it with your hands and all you get is broken nails and lacerated finger tips. So move onto heavier ordnance. A screwdriver perhaps?. No it’s too thick to get into the gaps. Time for the ever faithful Stanley knife.

So you end up slashing wildly at the egg, probably wounding yourself and several small children in the process.

And what do you get? Chocolate smithereens. Which is what all that packaging was supposed to protect against in the first place.

So it is on behalf of the planet, small children and A&E departments everywhere, that I say thank you to Nestle which this year has replaced the plastic armour on its eggs with a nice, simple, biodegradeable cardboard basket.

They’ve had to get rid of the flimsy flirty peep-hole packaging that allowed the eggs to stand out on shelf .  In its place they’ve introduced a protective veener they call a ‘cardboard box’ in the packaging industry.

Inside that sits the cardboard basket with wicker design.

So now all you do when you want an egg is open it, revealing two intact and enticing chocolate halves, eat it, then recycle the aluminium foil wrapping and carboard box. You wont have so much as a scar to show for it.

It’s a small but perfectly formed model of how corporations can act responsibly while increasing consumer satisfaction and making themselves look good in the process. 

Coley Porter Bell have moved offices! Now, while the prospect of moving a business can be quite daunting, it is also a chance to refresh, renew and as we are a brand design agency, a great creative opportunity where we can think about bringing our brand to life through our working environment…..in 3D.  We wanted our new space to be a reflection of who we are and what we do. 

We came up with a list of words that would form an essential part of the brief for both ourselves and our chosen architects. These were human touch, crafted and clever detail, colourful surprises, depth and realness - a place that works, and my favourite….a bit of glamour. We wanted a space that would encourage creativity both for our clients and for ourselves.

Well, to cut a long story short, we have worked very hard over the last few weeks in collaboration with ORMS (our chosen architects) to really bring our brand to life and create an environment that is absolutely Coley Porter Bell…..and somewhere that we love working in and are proud of. It has been an exciting and sometimes nail biting ride but we are in and I am still stroking our fuschia walls with glee.

Now we are looking forward to welcoming our clients and friends here and to having many creative and productive times ahead of us. 

Our new address is Coley Porter Bell, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR

Telephone 020 7559 5700

I read today that Marco Pierre White is now brand ambassador for Bernard Matthews to help promote the health benefits of turkey.

I couldn’t help but think what a sell-out MPW has become. Of course, he’s achieved pretty much everything there is to achieve in terms of culinary accolades so why not cash in? But surely, he still has restaurants and this kind of endorsement can’t be good for brand Marco.

Me and Patricia

Is it possible that affluence makes you humourless? My back is aching, my hands are sore and I’m sunburnt. But my sides hurt. I’ve just come back from a week at the village of Buikwe in North east Uganda where we are sponsoring and helping to build a secondary school. And despite the astonishing poverty, I can honestly say I heard more laughter in a week than I have heard in a year here in London.

The people in Buikwe live on an average of just 40p a day yet they seem so positive and happy.  On the sixth day I witnessed a five year old boy carrying his two year old brother on his back. It wasn’t a chore or a difficulty - the older boy happily carried the younger child. In return the younger child didn’t kick and scream, he helped his brother in his duty by constantly adjusting his position.  Can you imagine two infants in the UK cooperating like that?

The whole experience felt more like a crash course in basic moral values than the crash course in basic building techniques that I was expecting. But in theory at least, we were there, a party of ten of us from different Ogilvy companies, to help build the second phase of a secondary school. 

The CPB Shine Award is a competition we hold every year to uncover the finest new graphic design talent. It’s open to all 2nd year graphic design students and the winning entry becomes the following year’s poster.

Today I went to the printers to see this year’s Shine Award poster coming to life. Jia Ying Gnoh’s beautiful creation will soon be winging its way to a design course near you, after a few secret finishing touches!