[Shuz] wrote:It seems blatantly obvious, even to Blind Freddy, that strategy is the last thing that these 'professionals' thought of and used when coming up with new state logo. The whole thing has been an absolute farce and an absurd waste of $1.4m of taxpayer's money.
And to put the icing on the cake, the Liberals and Stephen Marshall are in support of retaining it!
It's just ludicrous. I have yet to come across anyone whom I've had a discussion with that likes it. The majority even questioned that there was nothing wrong with the SA: A Brillaint Blend logo and slogan.
As I said much earlier, I too believe the true problems with this rebranding stem back from the initial strategy stage. The original thing that sparked this whole thing was someone telling the premier they didn't know where SA was. Nice catalyst to begin a discussion, before delving into deeper issues about what the real goals should be and what the best way is to position our state, but it appears the brief itself never evolved beyond that - hence the ho-hum and very literal result. Since we don't know what actually happened - this could have been a failing on the part of Cato Partners, or it could have been the fault of the client (whoever in government was handling the project) - as they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Sometimes you do have to really battle a client to try and get them to go down the recommended path, and sometimes you have to eventually relent when it's clear the client is not prepared to budge despite their best interests (this is more common when bureaucracy rears it's head into a project, and design by committee forces a watered down solution). For all we know, Cato may have tried to engage them into discussing things deeper, but the government insisted that the location of SA was the real problem and that's what they wanted solved. (This doesn't excuse the technical failings with it, I think the logo and associated branding is badly done, but that's a separate issue and secondary to the strategy failings.)
To be fair though, the new brand isn't a redesign of the Brilliant Blend branding. Brilliant Blend was specific to the Tourism Commission, whereas the new brand is much more far reaching. Personally, I prefer the Brilliant Blend - it was much better resolved, and had a stronger concept. However, the goals of the rebranding are clearly different than what was needed for the Tourism Commission when that was done (as misguided as they are).