New brand strategies! New visual systems! New identifiers! New communications vehicles! New digital strategies! New websites! New applications!

At the time, we knew we had a lot on our plates, but looking back, we’re kind of amazed. Not that we have time to look back for long, mind you, because 2013 is shaping up to be even more busy… and rewarding.

One particular project makes us want to toot our own horn a bit, mind you… but mostly because the project is all about finding time to toot our own horn.

We’ve had the classic problem known as the “cobbler’s kids dilemma”: we were so busy making sure our clients were building and developing compelling communications that we weren’t spending much time revisiting our own shingle on the web. Every time we’d try and revisit our digital presence, we’d get started… and then shelve it for a new engagement, or a ramp-up period with one of our existing partners.

Or at least that’s what we did… until now.

Go see it.

Our brand new website, freshly launched this week.

(!!!)

Complete with an expanded portfolio section, updates on what we’ve been working on, and a whole bunch of bios.

(!!!)

We’re pretty happy we cobbled some new kicks for ourselves… and we hope you enjoy it, too.

And if you need brand strategy, messaging, print or digital design, content strategy, digital strategy, social media strategy, a new website… well, take a look, and feel free to get in touch.

We’d love to work with you.

A couple years ago I wrote post here called Brand Judo (or, find your inner lemon) that was subsequently fashioned into an article for Entrepreneur.com.

In it, I described how the Japanese martial art of Judo—characterized by the principle of turning an opponent’s attack back against them—can be applied by marketers to help flip negative perceptions into positive (and memorable!) brand stories. The classic Volkswagen “Lemon” campaign is a prime example.

After writing the post, one thing became apparent. Brand judo by big brands is rare. It takes a lot of courage for a brand to step out in the open, face its flaws head on, and then work to bend those flaws into a favorable story.

Late last week, a video from Microsoft quickly made the rounds through our digital media team. The video, entitled “Do you know this guy?” depicts a young guy at a computer registering his hate for Internet Explorer every way possible: commenting on tech site reviews, posting on Facebook, tweeting, etc. But after a series of rapid-fire exchanges with Microsoft’s social media accounts (hitting back with new features / capabilities), the guy begins to change his tune.

Sort of.

In the end he tweets:

IE sucks… less.

The screen then reads:

Progress.
Comebacks come in many shapes and sizes.

The video is part of a larger campaign called The Browser You Love to Hate.

Pretty bold. What big brand product has been beaten up more than Internet Exploder? It’s the veritable punching bag of the browser world. (Rightly so.)

But rather than continuing to fight IE’s negative perceptions, Microsoft has chosen to embrace them—and now owns them. And while it certainly won’t turn IE’s critics around overnight—there’s more than a few in this building—it did make us all laugh.

Which is to say that by making light of itself, and accepting our attacks in a positive way, Microsoft may have softened us up a bit…

Not a bad strategy in a fight.

On the left is eBay’s old mark, with the new take on the right.

Logo refinement is nothing new for companies both big and small. Brands from JC Penney to Starbucks have taken a run at their classic look over the last few months, with mixed results and reviews.

But what if the desire to refresh your identity and project a new image results in something less compelling and recognizable?

What if the new look doesn’t pack the same punch as the old one?

I asked a few members of the Sametz team what they thought. Some of their comments:

“It is a modern take on the old logo, but the new design looks generic to me. In particular, it lacks the energy and excitement of the active marketplace.”

“I really feel they took all the fun out. The brand used to have some personality, but no more… ”

“It looks bland.”

“I’m not sure if they achieved their purpose. I’m guessing they wanted something to reflect the brand they are now: a contemporary marketplace that’s much more than just the place you go to buy Star Wars memorabilia or Beanie Babies. But what’s the benefit of making the brand that much more sterile?”

And one other (more positive) note:

“I like the actual website presenting the new logo!”

If you’re keeping track, that’s four thumbs down, and one thumb up for a good launch strategy.

What do you think of the new eBay logo? Does it make you more or less interested in their brand? If you use eBay, will this evolution change your experience at all?

There are two places on earth where I am at my most confident and content: the first is in front of a keyboard (I’m a writer), and the second? In the kitchen (I’m an amateur, but capable cook.)

And the kitchen is where I go when I want to unwind from a long day, when I can indulge my love of unique flavors and create things that nourish my family.

I come from a long line of pretty good cooks, and as such, have utensils in my drawer that belonged to my great grandmother, and recipes pieced together after watching my mother’s flying hands dust a counter with flour to ready it for a lump of dough, or crush cloves of garlic with the side of her knife.

Outside of our little biscuit dynasty, however, my biggest hero of the apron-clad set is Julia Child.

Her lemony roast chicken is my family’s go-to on winter nights, and her fluffy chocolate mousse remains the pinnacle of my culinary achievements. If she says a certain tool is the right one for the job, that’s the tool I’ll use. If she says I can do it, I’m willing to sharpen my knife and give it a go.

When she passed away, I’m not ashamed to say I shed a few tears — and then immediately went to find her list of ingredients for Coq au Vin.

One of the things I loved most about her was her generosity: of spirit, of time, and of what she possessed. When she donated her home and office to her alma mater, Smith College, and her kitchen, walls and all, to the Smithsonian when she moved to a retirement community in California, it was clear how little she did for money and fame, and how much she did out of her deep love of learning, creating, and teaching.

There was no Julia Child line of gadgets or dishes or pots and pans, a la Martha Stewart or Mario Batali, nor was she a commercial spokesperson, a la Bobby Flay or Tom Colicchio. In fact, she eschewed all those possibilities (and profits) in favor of remaining purely focused on the art of cookery… and representative of no other brand but her own. She believed that these types of endorsements would strain her credibility with her fans, and that was something worth far more to her than a check.

That’s why BHS Home Appliances, the makers of Thermador ovens, in collaboration with California advertising firm, DGWB, has drawn the ire of the Julia Child Foundation by using her image in an ad series. Without permission.

While they insist that no commercial relationship between Thermador and Julia is expressly indicated, their response is disingenuous at best: why make the choice to use her image unless it benefits you in some way? BHS claims they’re simply referencing Julia’s use of Thermador ovens — but given the cultural weight of her brand, there’s no way to get around an implied endorsement. Or at least that’s what the Child Foundation hopes to prove in court. Since DGWB didn’t even attempt to secure rights to her image until after the ad went live, their chances seem solid… even as BHS is counter-suing.

For me, the entire debacle comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of Julia’s brand.

DGWB and BHS see Julia Child as a famous and beloved culinary figure with fans who take her word as law in the kitchen — and as such, the perfect person to represent their product. If Julia used it, her fans will want to use it. Simple, right?

Au contraire: for Julia’s fans, her steadfast refusal to do product endorsements or commercial partnerships is her brand.

Yes, she sold books. Yes, she was on television. But we love Julia because, though her career supplied her with a very comfortable living, her avoidance of quick-buck opportunities confirmed for us that she wasn’t in it for the money. She simply had a passion for cooking great food, and empowering us to do the same for ourselves. When someone loves something as much as Julia loved her kitchen, that enthusiasm is infectious… and that’s why we care.

Celebrity endorsements come in a variety of flavors, from name recognition to specific product endorsements to master-branded product partnerships.

Kids on the blacktop pony up for Nike Air Jordans hoping to be just like Mike — as though the secret to his success lay in the composition of his soles.

Teenage girls struggling with impossibly teenage skin buy Guthy-Renker’s Pro Activ because Justin Bieber and Katy Perry hold up bottles of cleanser next to their smooth skin in afterschool ads — whether or not that’s what cleared their skin, or whether their skin was ever anything but clear.

Martha Stewart promises us a taste of her lifestyle through her almost ubiquitous range of household products, from mixing bowls to bed linens — though the sheets that dress her own bed are likely a bit more pricey.

But one thing differentiates these spots from DGWB’s ads for Thermador: all these public figures choose to use their faces and careers to shill products, according to terms they’ve agreed to before any camera arrives on the scene. They choose to lend the attributes and strength of their brand to a company, in exchange for a significant fee.

In Julia’s case, one of the most fundamental attributes of her brand was that it wasn’t for sale. And while that ostensibly made her (unpaid) use of their product seem like an irresistible opportunity to BHS, it also made a sincere endorsement impossible. And sketchy.

Which is why I hope the next dish on the Child Foundation’s menu is… wait for it… Lobster Therm(a)dor.

At Sametz Blackstone, we’ve been excited to see a brand employing the concept of synecdoche* in this new mark: using a part to represent the whole. It’s a design that is fresh, punchy, and a little edgy; a bold move that works effectively to turn around the retailer’s previously stodgy reputation.

My high school did something similar a few years ago. Miss Porter’s School is an all-girls boarding and day school in Farmington, CT. Aware of a misperception that it was still a 1950’s-style “finishing school,” MPS leveraged the concept of synecdoche and entirely dropped the “Miss” and the “School” from their mark. (Insider’s note: “Porter’s” is what alumnae of my era call Miss Porter’s, while “Farmington” is how older generations refer to the school.)

While the name is still formally “Miss Porter’s School”—and that phrase appears somewhere on all materials, both print and digital—the new mark is an effective, high impact vehicle for communicating the character of the school today, while still recognizing a strong sense of place and history.

One final example (though very recently rendered obsolete): the Toronto Blue Jays former logo. A new version was unveiled in 2011, which incorporates the team’s full name, but the last incarnation (the second below) was a fun and evocative mark for the “Jays.” While the new logo has been hailed as a design success, the old edition was perfectly—and pithily—on point… thanks to synecdoche.

*Synecdoche: a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage). -Merriam-Webster Dictionary

This is a tremendously exciting time to be doing what we do: never before has there been such a diverse range of communication tools and venues available to help organizations tell their stories, and build a “mosaic brand.”

Blog posts around New Year’s often focus on reflections on the year behind us,  or predictions for the year ahead. We’re going to land somewhere in the middle, and share a few favorite posts from our blog over the last 12 months. Technically, that’s reflective, I suppose — but some of them had predictions, too!

We’ll be sharing more of our thinking in the months ahead, and celebrating some great achievements by our friends and partners.

Stay tuned.. and the very happiest of New Year’s to you and yours.

Sage thoughts from Roger on when “logo drama” is unwarranted (starring corporate titans Starbucks and the Gap)

Our New Year’s video from last year — a labor of love

What happens when great design and great music come together

A favorite identity from the past year — and a project we’re proud to be a part of

Everyone gets a turn with the markers and whiteboard around here

“Adopsters”… the hipsters of social media

Sametz Blackstone 101: so is it an actual “cup of tea”, or?

Director of Design, Joerg, looks back in time… and finds that it flies

A can by any other color would not taste as sweet?

Thanks for coming by today — and join us for more in 2012!

Subtle and spectacular: two words that describe the colors of the Arizona landscape. The daytime palette is dominated by blue skies and red earth, punctuated by the soft green of cacti and desert scrub and the mellow beige, gold, and brown of dry grass.

As evening approaches, the blues transition to lavender and purple; the reds shift to crimson and maroon. The once-saturated colors wash together to produce a gradient of extreme subtlety.

Somehow, Southwest Airlines has managed to capture that palette in their livery. The airline’s palette isn’t subtle or sophisticated, mind you. In fact, until I visited Arizona, I thought of Southwest’s as one of the uglier liveries on the nation’s runways.

But now I understand that it works. They’ve managed to evoke a palette that would be impossible to replicate on aluminum (and, indeed, is impossible to replicate photographically.)

Now, when I see their planes, I’m reminded of, and transported to the transcendent moments of extreme beauty we experienced driving and hiking through the Arizona landscape. Their brand uses color as a reference or reminder of something much more powerful than could ever be designed or distributed.

Southwest (their aircraft and their brand) becomes both the literal and metaphorical connection between customer and place.

Luckily, in addition to being an incredibly smart group of people, the Sametz Blackstone team is extraordinarily welcoming, patient, and kind. Over the last six weeks they have taught me far more than I would ever learn in a semester’s worth of classes on branding, marketing, and communications—with a sprinkling of design on top.

Part of my learning curve has been understanding the way of talking about branding unique to Sametz Blackstone. The following is a cheat sheet to a few of my favorite phrases heard often in the office:

“First handshake”: Your first impression of a brand. What is the look / feel / emotional affect of this brand?

“Messages have to live somewhere”: Branding messages aren’t just words that exist in a vacuum. How those messages are brought to life in printed materials or on a website is inextricably tied to design. You could have the most compelling brand message in the world, but if your fonts, imagery, and colors are inconsistent across different messaging vehicles, your brand will still not pack its maximum punch.

“Cups of Tea”: Qualitative research is a key tool to be used in understanding and articulating a meaningful, authentic brand message. Having metaphorical—or real!—cups of tea with different constituents across a brand (the brand managers, the brand users, etc.) is at the heart of what SBA does to really get to know a brand from the inside out and communicate its value most effectively.

“Ways In”: Different audiences connect with the same brand differently. An individual donor interested in educational policy issues shouldn’t be spoken to in the same way as the corporate foundation who needs to fulfill both a philanthropic and a marketing goal. Understand the different ways into your brand—and the brand values that resonate most closely with diverse key constituent groups—allows an organization to nimbly shift its messaging accordingly.

“Mosaic branding”: Fundamental to Sametz Blackstone’s work is the view that a brand is like a mosaic. It’s made up of pieces that we can control (for example, the words, fonts, and colors we use) and that we can’t control (your consumers’ conversations), which all come together to communicate the meaning integral to the dynamic organism that is a brand.

Casually drop one of these phrases into conversation at Sametz Blackstone and you’re sure to sound like an old pro.

Now, if only I could really become an old pro at the office’s archaic and rather terrifying phone system…