Bad creative or bad brief? I blame the client.
Good creative work deserves to recognized. At the very least, work that stands out amidst the clutter should be appreciated. Conversely, bad work should also be called out as such. Often in our industry mediocre work is celebrated as being something more than simply the sum it’s parts, usually by the beige talent that created it in the first place, and it should never see the light of day. Who’s to blame? Sometimes, quite honestly, it’s the client.
Case in point: the recent print campaign currently running for Industrial Alliance, an insurance and financial services behemoth (literally), and the redesign of their corporate logo that preceded the campaign.
But first, a little bit about Industrial Alliance, and the reason for the redesign of their corporate identity, taken from the Insurance Canada website:
“The fifth largest life and health insurance company in Canada, Industrial Alliance insures over 1.7 million Canadians, employs more than 2,600 people and manages over $30 billion in assets.... Industrial Alliance’s corporate image evolved in March 2007. Its new logo, inspired by the previous one, but with a more solid appearance, truly reflects its identity as a financial institution and its new challenges.
Since the elephant has been associated with the Company for several years and gradually became one of the most powerful features of it’s institutional identity, Industrial Alliance decides to integrate it into its new logo. The five simple yet stylized lines that form the elephant symbolize the Company’s contemporary, dynamic, solid, warm, and trustworthy nature and are an integral component of Industrial Alliance’s new visual identity.”
Wow. They really shoveled the elephant poo on the rationale. That’s a tall order for any logo. - “the five lines of the logo symbolize contemporary, dynamic, solid, warm and trustworthy”? The elephant, as corporate icon, could just as well be interpreted as symbolizing the fact your organization is slow moving and hasn’t changed since the ice age. At least that would be easier to digest and probably be closer on mark.
But my issue isn’t with the logo itself, it’s how the re-design came about in the first place.
Industrial Alliance organized a contest between a few agencies and their own in-house designers. It was created in a vacuum without, I assume, any meaningful communication between the client and the designer. The result is a superficial update that seems to represent change for change’s sake. Good PR, lackluster branding. One of the most formidable assets that any company has is its brand. IA, a company with a 100 year history, 2,600 employees and $30 billion in assets, played spin the bottle with their brand asset. Sometimes, as the expression goes, clients get the work they deserve.
At any rate, they tweaked the corporate logo in advance of a significant campaign that rolled out in major dailies to communicate just how contemporary, dynamic, solid, warm and trustworthy they are. Drum roll please...
I’m not sure what virtue, feature or benefit is meant to be communicated in these ads. What I do know is that the corporate elephant is seen interacting in everyday situations among every day people, like riding the subway or crossing a busy city street. Apparently unnoticed. The odd Photoshop motion blur is applied to the background here and there, I guess to make it seem like the corporate elephant isn’t a large, slow moving beast at all.
I read the ad. I didn’t get it. I read the headline again, “You won’t find us at the zoo!”. Did market research reveal IA’s customers were going to the zoo for their insurance and financial products? If so, was the agency charged with the responsibility of correcting this behaviour? And how come no one is paying attention to the elephant? Christ, if I saw an elephant on the subway I’d run like hell, not continue to read my newspaper. Why not change the headline to read, “We’ve been around for 100 years, pretty much invisible, but now we are the elephant in the room.”
The supporting copy lamely tries to tie the message and creative together, “with you for over 100 years” and, “a partner you can trust”. I guess that speaks to the longevity of the great beast, and that elephants are somehow more trustworthy than the rest of the animal kingdom (read insurance and financial services industry). Maybe the ads should have used a white elephant, a byword that’s come to mean anything expensive, useless or bizarre.
Regardless of how we evaluate creative to be either good or bad, or what metrics we apply to gauge the quality and effectiveness of the creative, there will always be one constant in play: the client approves the creative. Always. So bad creative? Bad brief? Either way, I blame the client.
I realize I may be beating IA up a bit so I’ll throw them a bone, pro bono. I’ve taken the liberty of re-designing their old logo with something that I feel symbolizes the fact that they are contemporary, dynamic, solid, warm and trustworthy. Like Industrial Alliance, I didn’t put much thought into it either.
- Tagged in: design, strategy, branding, business
- Category: Branding
