eyedropper.co.uk

Been a lot of this sort of ‘No Logo’ thing recently, only mostly in a bad way. I give you, a tale of two brands.

French Connection has finally dropped the awful FC:UK thing. thank fuck for that one might say. It was a one-liner that went on for far to long. the simple pun FC:UK was poor, but when it got to ‘fancy a fcuk’ or ‘I don’t give a fcuk’ in a hippy typeface, it made me scream! Why stop there, if the aim is to be edgy and daring, what about ‘FC:UK dead dogs’ or ‘FC:UK spastics’?

Let’s face it, FC:UK as a brand is mostly popular with people who… don’t. As shown by booze industry stool pigeons, The Portman Group here, when French Connection tried (and failed) to launch an alcho-pop in 2003.

So now they have a new ad out, which guess what.. sends up the previous campaign! Who’d have thought it eh? According to The Independent, the logo will be replaced by a series of ironic, self-referential phrases such as “Don’t make us say it”, “Something beginning with F”, with no other clues as to which brand they represent.

Jesus you can imagine the pitch… How lame of TBWA, (who’s flashtastrophy of a site don’t work in Safari, and look at their US page, it’s a full on ‘ironic’ under construction flash page!)

I’ve seen the ad, It’s rubbish, first I thought it was that HSBC one, that also featured a denim clad guy travelling across South America on a bike, then when the words came up I totally misread the typeface and thought it was for GAP, because, like most of the Western World, I’m mentally attuned to glaze over when commercials come on. Here’s the thing in it’s shitty entirety.

The Economist on the other hand, have been cleverly playing with their brand for ages. They’ve used one colour and one typeface to great effect. This is supplemented either toying with the title, such as switching it to Morse Code, or appropriating words and phrases from economic circles and popular culture.