Graphic Design Services - London, UK

No matter how good your branding may be, it cannot overcome a bad product. Design a great website, fill it with all kinds of promises, and charge people £25 each in order to take the kids out.  If you cannot deliver all the promises your marketing may suggest, people will quickly turn away from your business. Even worse, people may start clamouring around for refunds and your business could get shut down for not meeting the necessary trading standards.

Though a good image can help cover a product's shortcomings, discerning customers can quickly tell when they are being sold short.

Especially when they expect something akin to an Icelandic adventure, "where dreams really do come true" (according to their advertising strapline)

and instead get this -

What would you expect for around $1 million investment on a rebranding excercise? And how risky is it tampering with a classic, well known logo in an attempt to engage the general public?

The questions which have to be asked in a project like this - is exactly who is being targetted? Will the rebranding affect the current Pepsi lovers? Or - does anyone really care? After all, tampering with a globally recognised brand is a risky business. By putting it up for public scrutiny, end trying to engage the market through various social media sites using sites such as You Tube and Flikr to reach out and, try to generate some buzz around the new loo, they have to be commended for moving into new ways of interacting with customer base.

A quick look at the redesign quickly brings to mind a multi-colored Pac-man. Some of the comments from the last few weeks on their flikr site give an insight into some possible perceptions, including "Wate of money!", "Miliions over Millions goin to the trash" to "I love it, it is totally minimilistic".

Whataver your opinion might be, the lack of sustained excitement or interaction around the released pictures is not surprising given that the US was going through the throes of a presidential election and in the opening stages of a severe economic downturn. The Pepsi strategy of trying to engage through social media using the proposed new design as a focal point for discussions, is pretty innovative for such a large corporation, and though the timing may not have been perfect it was a brave move. We'll have to wait and see whether any of the criticisms, advice and comments are taken on board, and what there plans are for moving this forward.

Over the last few years, DBDC has built a reputation for quality graphic design services. We are now extremely pleased to add business consultancy to our offerings as part of our continous efforts to move forward positively developing ourselves for the benefit of our clients.

Double Barrel Design & Consultancy has been at the forefront of supporting companies in the public, private and third sectors, working hard over the past two years to develop specific and tailored services to maximise the impact for individual clients.

Screenshot - Community Involvement   

In times of doom and gloom - revitalising your services and sales could be vital to survival

In these times of projected economic hardship - the initial instinct of many businesses is to batton down the hatches and try to ride out the storm. At the same time, we know that people become more particular in what they need in terms of services and products, and being able to differentiate yourself from the competition is vital in order to make sure that you survive in the increasingly difficult market conditions, which is why we are going to be seeing many large brands relaunching/ rebranding themselves in the coming months. 

Proof from the Design Council that businesses that utilise design do better than those that do no, based upon the Value of Design Factfinder which shows the positive impact of design on practically every measure of business performance in terms of market share, growth, productivity, share price and competitiveness. Here is a brief list of some of their finding - 

• Two thirds of companies who ignore design have to compete mainly on price. In companies where design is integral, just one third do so.
• More than eight out of ten design-led companies have introduced a new product or service in the last three years, compared to just 40 per cent of UK companies overall. 83% of companies in which design is integral have seen their market share increase, compared to the UK average of 46%.
• Design is integral to 39% of rapidly growing companies but to only 7% of static ones.
• 80 per cent of design-led businesses have opened up new markets in the last three years. Only 42% of UK businesses overall have done so.
• A business that increases its investment in design is more than twice as likely to see its turnover grow as a business that does not do so.
  

The trial rebranding of Pizza Hut - now known sometimes as Pasta Hut, has been underway for little under a month, replacing its pizza-focused menu with a menu consisting mainly of pasta dishes.

As far as rebrands go, this seems to be a subtle change building upon the familiar rather than a new image or focus.The look remains almost identical, with the graphic elements, font type, size and even the overall shape of the brand name remaining the same (you notice that both Pizza and Pasta begin with P, and are 5 letters long, maintaining consistency in image even with the change).

My own guess is that it is a ploy to push the line-up of Pasta they have on offer, and then revert back to the tried and tested (and catchier) Pizza Hut once they have got the news out there and achieved their objective.

 BACKGROUND

The re-branding is part of an £18 million revamp package designed to attract new customers and move it into more upmarket terrain - competing I would imagine with the likes of Pizza Express (though, personally, changing the name is not going to help them much if the product stays the same)

As part of the revamp, the chain has been temporarily re-naming 30 of its branches Pasta Hut.

Pizza Hut (Pasta Hut?) boss Alasdair Murdoch has said that "We're trying to say to people: 'Yes, we're great at pizzas, but we're also great at salads and pasta.' "