Hundredth Monkey Magazine

When I learned of the proposed North Carolina “Amendment One” to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage, I became concerned on two levels:

1. Personally, because I find the amendment morally repugnant, and
2. Professionally, because at this point in North Carolina’s history, we cannot afford to step back in time. I seriously believe that such regressive initiatives can hobble the state’s commercial advancement.

It embarrasses me that we’ve even come to this.

Usually, I try to keep politics out of my business writing, but I find Amendment One to be so fundamentally unfair (and downright cynical, on the part of its legislative proponents) that I’m compelled to make a professional endorsement of the opposition to Amendment One.

Please join me and the King’s English staff in voting AGAINST Amendment One. I want to be able to provide benefits to all families whose members we employ. And it’s vital to our economy to be welcoming and supportive of all citizens.

King’s English has redesigned its corporate identity. Our previous logo served us for nearly 12 years. It gave us a graphical name that coupled a somewhat modern icon—one that could stand alone—and a literate logotype with just enough serifs to say, “we can write.” That logo’s design coincided with our move to 335 South Davie.

Our newest update coincides with a comeback, as well as a decade of rapid change, a la that now quaint tome, Future Shock. King’s English will soon fly a new flag on Davie, but it’s a flag with a family.

Like a wardrobe, we’ve given it the option to sport different colors…but, all in one palette.

It’s not the first time we took this approach. A decade ago, we designed the identity for the Weatherspoon Art Museum with a “corporate palette” approach. The museum staff was encouraged to pick their favorite color for their calling cards.

The financial crisis of 2008 socked King’s English (we felt the effects most in 2009) more than the aftermath of September 11, 2001. But we’re seeing positive signs in new business, our legacy clients are reviving their campaigns and our leaner approach paid off. What better way to shake off a recession than a new “outfit”?

More important, however, was the need to address the changing eyes and perceptions of our audience.

Google blew the roof off stodgy logo conventions by showing the world how a strong graphic can change for the occasion with their amazing calendar-conscious and event-driven logo treatments. As a company staffed by musicians, we especially appreciated Google’s Les Paul salute. (If you missed the interactive version, be sure to try it out here.)

Their whimsical and slightly self-effacing tributes to the subjects you might be Googling suggest that Google doesn’t take itself more seriously than its users. They also demonstrate a timeliness and keen sense of current events that’s pretty amazing to us mortals. How do they come up with so much good stuff so fast?

Thus, we see that a memorable graphic can withstand some alteration, so long as its “logo-ness” is not altered. Maybe human eyes, now trained to take in millions of graphic images and text messages, are better able to grasp logos that aren’t as corporate and inert as those that we were taught to design 20 years ago.

There’s something energizing about updating a wardrobe, painting your favorite room or getting a new haircut. For a business, product or organization, a fresh new take on graphic identity is an exercise in intentionality, vitality and shelf appeal.

Last month Adweek published “2011 top 10 brands’ rank and overall YouGov BrandIndex Buzz score.” The results look like a Manhattan transit map at first, but once you get oriented, the chart is a lot of fun to scrutinize.

For small advertisers and marketers, how does your brand line up with these ten majors when it comes to appealing to parents, ethnic groups and political types?

Read the whole article here.

Good thing Greensboro has the Interactive Resource Center to provide daytime support for our neighbors without homes. In November 2010, the IRC had about 74 intakes. One year later, last month, the IRC saw the number increase to 191.

Lamar Gibson, IRC business manager, today expressed some pride in the Center’s ability to manage the growing numbers, but he’s also concerned about the demand.

It’s good cause if you’re looking for a seasonal contribution. They need money, volunteers and in-kind services. Go check it out sometime, too. It’s an impressive facility with a very positive and progressive vibe.

My favorite media buy for 2011? The Lindley Park Gazette, a 12-page Xerographic neighborhood publication published and edited by ten-year-old Lucy Newsom and a staff of her contemporaries.

Why?

The Gazette gets delivered to over 100 homes in a neighborhood that is culturally congruous to King’s English and one of our clients, Ink Photography Production, and there have to be at least a few marketing managers living there.

At $5 an ad, that’s a couple cents per impression when you figure in pass-along and pickup readership from the publication’s one newspaper box in the center of the neighborhood’s business district.

Also, there’s the kids and dogs factor. Who wouldn’t love an earnest and whimsical product of neighborhood youngsters. And we made sure to put a Boston terrier in our ad, to boot.

Then there’s cause adoption. Ms. Newsom’s Gazette isn’t “cute,” it’s authentic. She’s covering historic progress in the neighborhood with archival photos, reporting on real issues, interviewing a neighborhood beekeeper and offering comic send up of newspaper horoscopes.

No. Keep the writer to come up with IDEAS for the photographer. But brand-supporting images are more important than ever in social media, especially with niche sites like one of our favorites, Pinterest.

We’re using Pinterest for two consumer brands.

It doesn’t have to be award-winning photography, but if you want a consumer to “pin you,” it needs to be interesting and incite some creativity in the consumer’s mind.

American Express Open Forum offers several case studies on visually-driven niche social media.

Participation should be consistent and authentic, behavior that makes sense for site etiquette. These niche communities, as strong as they are on their own, cannot exist in a silo. For them to truly succeed, they must be part of your larger brand story and be supported by the other channels.—Alicia Barnes, ModCloth (social media user), from Forum.

Adweek’s current issue features “The Blanding of America” and has a nice review and critique of the current pack of presidential hopefuls’ logos, none of which are anything to robocall home about.

We figure the clients for these designs (including a certain incumbent with the Shepard Fairey cachet) have egos as big as all outdoors, so maybe that’s half the problem and we should give the benefit of the doubt to the respective designers.

It’s bad enough having to design for some Dilbertesque megalomaniacs in the private sector. Can you imagine taking “creative” feedback from someone who has an entourage just to accept blame for bad ideas?

It’s a good non-partisan read for anyone considering their own corporate IDs.

Political branding today is, in a word, bad. The experts all say the typical Republican logo has lost its macho mojo–think Bush’s bold 2004 ‘W’ graphical byte, McCain’s 2008 optimum font, evoking the type on the Vietnam Memorial–and gone soft. It’s also lost its ideological heft. ‘I don’t think there’s much good out there,’ Milton Glaser, the National Medal of Arts recipient behind the ‘I Love New York’ logo and CBS Records’ ‘Bob Dylan’ poster–a black silhouette with psychedelic hair–tells Adweek.

Ad icon David Ogilvy admonished his staff to always use the clients’ products. For him that was Hathaway shirts and Dove “soap,” among others.

We put quotes around soap, because Dove is NOT soap.

Our client, South of France®, makes REAL soap. It’s French milled and comes in big honkin’ bars that smell great. So it’s easy for this former Irish Spring user to heartily endorse and use daily this client’s product.

If you’re not using real soap, you’re probably rubbing your body with petrochemicals and animal fat.

We just went live with a new social media campaign for South of France, anchored by their blog The Soap Dish and supported by presences on Facebook and Printerest.

King’s English is providing pro bono marketing services—including a new blog-based website—to the Interactive Resource Center, Greensboro’s day center for people dealing with homelessness, a couple blocks from our office.

Executive director Liz Seymour is providing forward-thinking, practical leadership for an innovative facility that provides recovery-based support for our neighbors who have become homeless.

Think of all the things you’d miss just during the daytime if you lost your home? No place to hang your coat. No place to take a shower. No place to sit down and relax. The IRC provides all this with lockers, free laundry, haircuts, interview wardrobe, comfortable chairs, a phone bank and a computer lab. And nobody hassles you to move on.

It’s a really upbeat space and one you might want to visit, which is easy to do. The site opens for community events from time to time. On October 7, IRC hosted the opening of Greensboro’s Artstock Studio Tour.

Mack and Mack’s dazzling but comfortable showroom displays the dressmaking genius of principal Robin Mack Davis. And once a month as part of Downtown Greensboro’s First Friday event, the F*Art Ensemble balances the elegance and sophistication with some of Greensboro’s best professional musicians breaking all the rules of orchestral protocol.

The loose confederation of Greensboro Symphony and jazz players might do a brash riff on Don McLean’s “Vincent” or compose an impromptu protest anthem for Occupy Wall Street. There’s plenty of serious chops on display, but also a lot of playfulness you’d expect to see in the high school band room…multi-instrumentalist Dave Doyle enjoys the sound of his freshly licked thumb sliding across the back of a broken cello to produce a sound that is both gastric and somehow appropriate, while pianist Gill Fray gets away with murder by finger plucking the strings Ms. Davis’ stately Steinway.

We always leave Mack and Mack both inspired and charmed, clear in the understanding that the shop is anything but stuffy.