MySpace - Reviving the Brand?

As in a previous post I mentioned the public reaction to the new GAP logo, and the problem being that GAP had not done enough investigation into the opinions of the audience before it was published on the website - leading to complaints.


Now another brand is looking to redesign their logo in the hope to revive itself - MySpace. One of the original social networking sites, since the introduction of Facebook it has lost popularity, and is now about to begin a brand relaunch. 


The idea of the logo is that it makes a visual change in the brand since it first came about in 2003. The new logo will replace the 'Space' with a blank line, in which user generated images can be placed as MySpace is about the user and is what you make it according to Mike Macadaan (MySpace vice president of user experience and design);

"If we really are getting into a place where you're going to be able to show off what you're into - or what it is you're trying to get famous by - the logo needs to be a vessel, an empty stage. It can't be a logo that is all about some big company that's trying to express a whole bunch of their own philosophies."

Although I like the new design, in all honesty I think that it is going to take much more than logo design to revive MySpace as a brand. The decline of it has very little to do with the logo but more with the user experience. People are taking to Facebook and other forms of social media, which although may not seem to be as visually appealing, are much easier for networking and have a much wider target audience.

Seven Days

Seven Days is Channel 4's new programme focusing on a wide, diverse group of people who all live in Notting Hill. As I mentioned in a previous post (Notting Hill Carnival) about this part of London, Notting Hill is incredibly diverse in the kinds of people that live there and this show focuses on this. From aspiring actresses, to gay hairdressers to unemployed soon-to-be teenage parents.

What stands out most about the show however, is that it's filmed the week it's broadcast, and along with a ChatNav facility on the Channel 4 website, viewers can comment on the characters and give opinions and advice on what they should do next. It makes for good watching when you see some of the characters react to bad comments, and even people coming up to talk to two of them in a cafe and ask 'is this all that you really talk about?'. 

I thought this was a really innovative way to create a show. So much of it is based on the viewer. The subject may not be to many people's tastes as to be honest the character's don't really do much but the interaction between them and the viewers comments makes the show stand out against other documentaries.

What the Flock?

I'm quite interested to see what this campaign is about.

Walking through Hyde Park into university the other day I was greeted by a large number of black sheep stuck into the grass, along with the words 'what the flock?' painted on the ground. Although I thought it was a bit weird, it's definitely not the weirdest thing I've seen in Hyde Park before so I didn't think much of it until I saw a friend had been tagged in 'What the Flocks?' album on Facebook.

So what the flock is with all the sheep in Leeds? No idea. The website www.whattheflock.org.uk says all will be revealed on 10/10/10, but all we have no aside from the large amount of fake wooly creatures around the town is a short video with a lot of students looking shocked and saying '17?'.

The suspense around this campaign is enthralling, it makes me want to check back and see what it's actually about. Maybe a not so good comparison was when Pantene Pro V shampoo did a campaign where they sent out non branded sachets of shampoo of their product and didn't tell any of the receivers what the product was. By doing this they had confidence that the effects of their product would outweigh the brand name.

I'm looking forward to seeing what this is all about on 10/10/10.

Glove Love

I will always be slightly biased towards places that I've done internships for. Mainly because I am even more aware of the amount of work that goes into each design and campaign. So here is a fun campaign for an online charity called Do The Green Thing, who I spent a month with last summer.

As the name of the charity suggests Green Thing is focused on improving the world we live in through being greener. Based online, it focuses on 7 things you can do to live a greener life.

So, whilst on my internship there they were bringing all the abandoned gloves in from around London. Going to Transport for London daily and collected sacks of gloves that had been left behind and abandoned. Most were single, and a lot of them were in a state of disrepair.

The intention was to pair single gloves together and sell them (washed of course, and with the green thing logo on them) to raise money for the charity. This campaign falls into the 'all-consuming' category of the charity - wasting nothing and using everything. It's a great idea, and each glove comes with it's own heart-warming story as to where it was found and how it met it's other glove. There are some really fun videos on the website to promote the campaign too.

All the creative work for the charity is done by volunteers from all professions, including many a celebrity who the founders of the charity have contacts with (for my interview I had to go to a We Are Scientists video shoot). It's a great way to get involved and they are always looking for people to lend a helping hand and give their creative input.

This is the website - dothegreenthing.com

A New Way to Market Yourself

It's not just design students who have 'online portfolios'.

Employkyle.com is a website by a business student who has created a campaign to get himself employed for a graduate job. Although he didn't design it himself I really liked the way that he has gone that one step further to create a website that shows that he is committed to finding a job, especially as he isn't even a design student! He points out that 70 people apply for each graduate job, so this really is a good way to stand out against the rest.

There is even a bidding section where companies can bid for him. He's had 9 bids so far, including a job in New York which doesn't seem too bad...

We Are Hunted

Having spent the past year working within an online marketing team, I've learnt the importance of tagging, tracking and all the kinds of methods used to find out about user's activities, information and web usage. Basically I've learnt how to be nosey through the internet.

We Are Hunted is a site that uses all of these methods to track the online 99 most popular music tracks of the day by measuring popularity on blogs, forums, Spotify and other social media. Different to that of other online music charts this doesn't include music downloads, but focuses on the more sporatic side of music popularity, through forms of social media that can effect the charts by even the smallest keyword.

It's an online marketer's music heaven. The only thing I would change would be to make the interface a bit more user friendly. Although it initially looks slick and well designed, these factors actually made it quite hard for me to navigate around and actually find the top 99 tracks past number 9.

Kin's Channel

This online campaign is a brilliant example of what we would consider to be a friend now that so many people use social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Microsoft has created a set of short episodes displayed on a YouTube channel to promote its ‘Kin’ social networking phone.

The idea behind the campaign is that the star of the films, Rosa, who has over 800 friends on Facebook, has to go and visit each one separately, no matter where they are in the world, and see whether or not they are actually her friends.  Meetings include the person she’s never met, the one who got away and an old school friend.

What I think most of us can relate to is that even she has a number of ‘friends’ on Facebook who she’s only briefly met, or hasn’t spoken to for a long time. I often find myself looking through my friends and wondering who people are…. maybe the campaign is encouraging us to cut our friends lists down?!

I think in itself it’s a brilliant concept, although I’m not too sure how it would encourage me to buy the phone, especially when the majority of all phones now support social networking apps. I don’t think I’ll be changing my iPhone anytime soon.

In fact now I’ve researched further into this since I saw it a couple of months ago it turns out that Microsoft have axed their Kin phone. Even a good advertising campaign can't sell an average product.