This new MTV logo has the fresh, clean crisp smell of New Coke.
One letter brings this redesign all home for me: Y.
If you want to drop the work marks, OK, I get why. But the rest of it is a bastardization of a world-wide icon.
Please feel free to tell me I’m wrong and why. Or am I not being harsh enough?
A tip of the hat to my voice over friend Bill Pryce who noted Advertising Age’s summary of the 2010 Super Bowl ads for folks like me who were actually in the studio during most of the game (and not complaining about the bidness either).
I was heading off to bed when a last quick look at my email showed a note from my fellow Buffalo voice talent Dan Lenard who I haven’t heard from in a while.
Seems he’s been working with my friend (and his friend too I suppose) Nancy Wolfson from Braintracks Audio on some branding efforts for the web and he wanted to announce it to everyone.
I hope if you have a moment you’ll check out Dan and Nancy’s efforts.
This is a political post but not in a Democrat or Republican kind of way.
You may have seen in the news last week as an “also in the news” feature after the Haiti and NBC late night imbroglio, that the Supreme Court issued a ruling that loosened restrictions on corporate campaign spending.
As viewers and listeners, this means more political campaign ads – soft, hard and/or nasty – but upwards in some estimates of $300,000,000 more in political ad spending in the next political cycle.
Whether or not you like that as a citizen or politico matters less to me that what that ruling means to me as a voice over talent of political spots for radio and TV. If you wanted to, say, only cut me in for .5% of that total in voice over work – I’d probably consider it.
Some voice talents don’t like to do political spots and some, like me, study the client/candidate for their stand on one or two issues of high importance and if he/she doesn’t match up, you pass on the spot.
So if you’re of a mind to, you might want to dust off your political commercial voice over demo and maybe think about updating it if you haven’t in a while. It looks like it’s gong to get politically busy pretty soon.
Back in the early 1950’s 
when I started out blogging about voice overs (and marketing and advertising), there were like…5 of us. Now there’s a double-decker London bus full of voice over bloggers.
While I think I have them all listed here and subscribe to them all, I know that the playing field changes fast and frequently. That coupled with the fact that some bloggers fall of the face of the earth or get bored with blogging means my list needs updating. If you’d rather not watch paint dry, you can always sift through a listing of voice over bloggers to see who is still actively publishing…the effect is the same but voice over blog list actually feels more tortuous.
Example: one blog I THOUGHT I was subscribed to and had listed here was Paul Strikwerda’s blog called Double Dutch. Very good blog and you should subscribe.
Today I realized this omission and fixed it. But it reminded me to ask you if you have a voice over blog and are not listed with a link on voxmarketising.com to:
1. Please let me know this and I will correct the error
2. If you haven’t already, please link back from your blog to this blog (audio’connell’s voxmarketising – is the proper name and the address is http://www.voxmarketising.com) So simple, even a caveman can do it.
3. If you have ceased blogging and are on my list, just ping me and I’ll pull you off the list.
Thanks.
It should not come as a surprise to you, gentle reader, that I love design and specifically advertising and marketing design. Visuals that must convey meaning and message in a short amount of time (usually) and birth an emotion and/or action within the viewer.
From a world wide perspective, there is no bigger brand in the world than Coca-Cola. My preference in cola leans directly toward Pepsi but business is bidnez and Coke is it. To wit:
With 450 brands operating in 200 countries, and 20,000 retailers selling 1.6 billion servings of Coke products per day — that’s 18,000 servings per second — it would be hard to find a bigger canvas on which to explore design as an enterprise function. (He) oversees a team of 50 designers within Coke and works with some 300 agencies worldwide.
With the curtain is pulled back on the recent design activities of the world’s largest brand, I think it’s worth a read.
And according to the story’s protagonist, the process may involve design but it isn’t about design – it’s about selling stuff.
Darn tootin’!
