Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author

As seen on CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox, Wired, Yahoo!, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal
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Tagged branding

Smooth Harold’s alter ego has a new homepage

Blake Snow

In an effort to centralize my online identity, I launched BlakeSnow.com this week. The site features state of the art HTML, some fancy javascript animation, and an enlarged photo of my shapely cranium. I’ll still be blogging under my pseudonym here, and maintain other websites as well, but this will serve as an entry point for people who don’t know me. Plus it makes me look cooler than I really am.

(Thanks, Robert)

Pepsi should fire their creative agency. Here’s proof.

New Pepsi can with new and old logos

At the very least, the team responsible for making the hideous new logo look like a Pepsi-fied version of Strong Sad. Why didn’t the company just refresh their packaging without the logo change? The new cans, and even the “Pepsi” logotype, look slick — I’ll give them that — but they would’ve looked much better with the original, classic logo. Here’s a mock-up I made to prove the point. But what do I care: Coke tastes way better, no?

See also: YouTube: The rebranding of Pepsi

T-Mobile: We own the color magenta

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Engadget tells the story: “So last week Deutsche Telekom, owners of the global T-Mobile brand, sent Engadget a late birthday present: a hand-delivered letter direct from their German legal department requesting the prompt discontinuation of the use of the color magenta on Engadget Mobile. Yep, seriously.”

If you read the legalese, the company says it “holds trademark protection for this use of this color in connection with its products and services around the world.”

Since when could you copyright a color, even in connection with a product or service? Ridiculous — otherwise Apple could sue any computer-maker that used the color white (though white’s not really a color, so that opens another can of worms).

Atta way to exploit legal muscle, T-Mobile. Nice form. Really. This totally makes me want to stay with you instead of jumping to AT&T’s iPhone.

Microsoft brand in sharp decline

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHCRimwRGLs[/youtube]

IDG News (whom I freelance for) reports: “Microsoft’s brand power has been in sharp decline over the past four years, an indication the company is losing credibility and mindshare with U.S. business users, according to a recent study by market research firm CoreBrand.”

I enjoy seeing fat business cows get a proper market cleansing.

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