Why the London 2012 logo is a HUGE success

OK so the initial controversy over the London 2012 logo has died down.  Somewhat.

My feed reader is kind of quirky sometimes and I just got retreads on posts from Mack and David on the subject.

Despite all of the negative takes on the logo, I think it's a success.  Why?

1.  The event is five years away and people outside of London are buzzing about it. Since when did the general public care about the Olympics anymore?  I used to work for a sporting goods company and I remember the day that our running marketing manager gave us a hard time about this.  Unlike football (i.e. soccer), which people care about every day, all year and which gets much more funding.
2.  Can you recall what the last Olympic logo was?  Do you even remember where it was held?  Can you recall ANY Olympic logos?  I remember 1996, because I was living in Atlanta at the time.  I remember 1988, because I went to Seoul the year before.  Otherwise...?
3.  [Proper form would have me make three points to support the argument, but in this case I think the first two suffice.]

As Oscar Wilde said, "there is only only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Comments

[Pete]

Thanks for the insight, David - nice point on unifying vs. dividing. I guess one way we can judge whether it works or not will be in the sponsorship dollars that are raised in the coming years...

[david armano]

I think items like "New Coke" are a good comparison and quoting Oscar Wilde in this context is painting with a fairly broad brush. Everyone in the marketing field talked about the agency.com subway pitch video, and yet it doesn't appear that it did either brands any favors. To this day, that example comes up in agencies, when we do pitches, in the context of something to avoid. Like the subway pitch example, I admire London's effort to try something different. But there is a huge gap between producing something that is bland or mediocre and creating something that divides when it's supposed to do the opposite. My take is that the logo was off strategy even if it was well executed. Yes, personally I think it's an eyesore, but the fact that the design strategy was to pay homage to London's new wave/MTV contributions doesn't translate to an international audience. In fact, it backfired locally as most people in London didn't feel like it did the city justice. So who was the designer designing for? Did someone fall in love with an idea? I think they did. I could be totally wrong. And maybe time will prove this so. But in my gut, something is just not right. I have to go with that instinct. No matter what Oscar says... :)

[Pete]

Hi David,

Don't get me wrong - I don't think the logo is aesthetically pleasing at all either. But I write this blog about marketing from a business perspective and compared to any other logo, London's is memorable. Did you try and remember any past logos? Could you think of any?

There is also a huge difference between the products you mention and the Olympic Games. In your examples, the problem was the product itself. With London, the issue appears to be with the graphic design. For London 2012 to fall into the same category, we'd have to see something like many athletes disqualified for drug use (ahem Tour de France)...!

[David Blanar]

Nonsense.

You're mixing up the truism about no such thing as bad publicity with the need for strong visual communication language.

The logo is bad not because I say so, but because overwhelming global reseponse has confirmed what my instinct tells me: it fails to convey anything about the event or the city. And, frankly, it's not aesthetically pleasing to a great number of people. Only arrogance would suggest this fact irrelevant.

Yes, we're talking about it. The same way we talked about New Coke, Dell Hell and Ford's combustable gas tanks. All that glitters is not gold.