Reviewing Long John Silver's fresh tagline

Long John Silver's latest tagline is:

Sea food differently

Obviously combining the ideas of "see food differently" and "sea food" into a single thought, this tagline scores high for economy of words.

The tagline is often used in TV and radio spots in the first person by employees, or actors playing employees, that declare "I sea food differently." The first person usage conveys the idea that Long John Silver's is not only a different dining experience, but that the company's unique way of doing things permeates every corner of the company, or what executives might call a "top-down" adoption of the corporate vision.

All in all, I think this tagline is a win. It's short. It holds multiple meanings and something about it seems fresh, which can be hard to do in the often stale fast food category. My compliments to the copywriter.

Tagline full of fiber

Taglines are a place where many companies stumble. Even when a company name is conservative or just informational, there seems to be a temptation to go a little crazy when it comes to taglines, especially when a company works in the B2B arena. This is one such example.

Company: Third Coast Produce
Tagline: "Lettuce produce for you!"

Yes, the exclamation point is really part of it. Yes, the quotation marks are really part of it. And a double pun. Need I say more? I could pick fun at it, but they probably have great fruit and veggies. While it pains me to see a line like this rumbling around town scrawled across the sides of delivery trucks, I mostly wish I had the opportunity to help companies like this develop a line worthy of all the hard work they put into their businesses.

Quicky: Disney gives you the chance to pop Hannah Montana's cherry

Every large company needs to hire a person with a dirty mind (or figure out which one of their current employees already does) to keep things like this from happening.

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Quicky: 34 Punctuation Inspired Logos

Punctuation- it's not just for books anymore. Here's a collection of punctuation-inspired logos (we'll pretend to ignore the growing overuse of exclamation points in place as the letter "i").

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Adweek: A tale of two Tigers

Adweek has naturally devoted a lavish amount of coverage on Tiger, but can't seem to make up their minds on whether or not recent events will negatively impact his image and earning potential. Here's one Adweek article where they say Tiger won't lose image points or sponsors from the public debacle and here's another from Adweek that says cutting Tiger is generating positive buzz for brands. So Adweek, which is it?

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Quicky: Microsoft's Bing being sued by Bing LLC

Read more here.

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Eat your words

A company's packaging presents a unique opportunity to communicate with consumers both before and after purchase. It's interesting that more brands haven't taken advantage of the fact that every item you sell can be another ad, except the cost is already be covered by your packaging budget.

Curiously enough, the fast food (and slower food) industry is the one group that seems to get this the most, with everybody from Wendy's to Starbucks putting little blurbs on their products. Even the little guys are getting involved now, like Brooklyn Fare, whose witty headlines serve to further communicate the business's personality, take a few stabs at competitors and even get a chuckle or two.

Sporks up to Aisle One

Just a little more expensive than expensive

Someone I know recently got a new (or at least new-looking) Honda Civic. As usual, the dealer put some badges and whatnot on the car to promote the dealership family. What words did this sage dealer choose to entice people to its lots full of gleaming new vehicular devices?

Just north of high prices

On a purely geographical level, this works. The dealership is in fact north of Houston in the suburbs. And if you consider the city inherently more expensive than the 'burbs, you're saying that the dealership is north of the expensive part of town. Kudos.

Unfortunately, the phrase doesn't work that way. Any time you deal with price, "costs just north of" translates to "is slightly more expensive than." If you're talking about a Civic that costs just north of $20,000, you're saying it's a Civic that is slightly more than $20,000.

So, translated, the slogan says that this dealer "is slightly more expensive than high prices."

I don't know about you, but I'm not going to any dealer that claims to have prices higher than high prices. It was a clever play on words with north, but the existing usage of north in reference to price puts this dealership in a tight spot. You could conceivably say "just south of high prices," but it's still not that enticing a claim economically and then you risk confusing folks as to where you dealership is located. All in all, it's a noble attempt that almost works, but ends up meaning exactly the opposite of what the dealership intended.

In reach, out of touch

I love some good modern design. It's one of the reasons I got so excited when I found out there was a place called Design Within Reach. Really? Modern furniture and accessories that are affordable? Sweet! WRONG.

Alas, Design Within Reach is anything but. I'm not sure exactly whose reach it's supposed to be in, but it certainly isn't mine. With items like the Artichoke Lamp pictured here for around $7,700 and the Eames Lounge for around $2,500 without the ottoman and nearly $4,000 with it, I hardly think allusions to affordability are justified.

The name of a business is important. In the best cases, it's supposed to say something alluring about your company and communicate the essence of what you do. In the worst cases, it can be confusing, unclear or in this case, outright misleading. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the day when I can buy some of the wonderful wares from this posh shop. But seeing as I don't come from money and I'm a young buck in the biz, I'm going to have to hit the lottery to seriously peruse their store any time soon.

I guess it shouldn't be any surprise though. Here in Texas, you can often get homes for $70/sq.ft., including the land, homes by modern prefab home builders that claim to make affordable housing usually run between $200-$400/sq.ft. not including site prep, foundation or land.

Too much of a good thing, Part 7- THE POINT

One of the main reasons this approach has worked for so long is because it was fairly uncommon. However, as it becomes more and more common, it becomes not the antithesis of homogeneity, but becomes homogenized itself. It’s boring. It has no personality. It has no character or voice. It tells you nothing about the brand but that they hired a designer who’s more interested in their own design perspective than in creating something appropriate for the brand. Minimalism and its elements have their time and place, especially when combined with other interesting, more dynamic styles. However, the bottom line is that if we get enough of these redesigns, the style will be just as ubiquitous and unoriginal as suburban white carpet and just as trendy and flat-footed as neon-colored fanny packs. Everything in moderation.

Too much of a good thing, Part 6- Stop and think

I’m not saying this sort of design has no place. It certainly does, but not with every brand nor with every application. Design should not get in the way of function, but use some judgment and use it where it’s appropriate, not just as a lazy default or because you have some sort of design mantra that demands it. If your theory of design demands the same solution for every problem, you’ve missed the boat entirely.

Too much of a good thing, Part 5- Not a new problem

This is a problem that has already long plagued the modern home industry. Many complain on modern home tours that they’re not shown a thing but uncomfortable, unlivable stark white boxes with giant windows. What’s to tell one white box from another? But evidently that’s high design.

Too much of a good thing, Part 4- Failure to communicate

And on a less design-related note, Target really dropped the ball when it came to informing anyone about the change. Many employees weren’t even informed until a month after products were on the shelf.

Too much of a good thing, Part 3- Dogma over design

Why? Because a minimal purist got their hands on one more project with which they can slowly homogenize the world with their design manifesto. The “RE” brand of home items prides itself on what it calls a revolutionary use of turquoise. News flash: the native Americans were using turquoise beads for hundreds if not thousands of years before a designer ever set foot here, and my grandmother had a closet full of turquoise that was all the rage in the 60s. The turquoise is jarring at best and fails monumentally at communicating comfort, home or style. And best of all, the way the packaging is designed now, they’ve managed to strip it of any boxes or separated areas, erasing any hierarchy of information that might assist a real consumer in decoding important information at a glance. But I suppose that is all part of the utopian design future.

Too much of a good thing, Part 2- The tipping point

I was finally tipped over the edge when I saw that Target had jumped on the bland-wagon with a redesign of its store brands. Never mind the years and millions of dollars in brand equity and trust that Target has built behind that iconic red target. Never mind that at a minimum, their store-brand of home goods had interesting, comforting, rich colors and patterns that fit the products and made you think of the comfortable, relaxing home you could enjoy with them. Scrap all that.

Too much of a good thing, Part 1- Ubiquity

Since you were a kid, people have been saying that you can never have too much of a good thing. Well, they’re wrong.

I believe clean, modern design is a good thing. However, that does NOT mean it’s something that everyone needs to use all the time. Lately I’ve seen more and more ultra-minimalist wet dreams of fields of white space touched with single color accents and Helvetica (or Helvetica-esque) fonts. I really enjoyed seeing this sort of look originally, because at the time it was, well…original. But when Walmart has taken on the style, it just may have reached the point of ubiquity.

April foolish

For better or worse, April 1 did not hold many surprises for me. A few sites had great April Fool's material deftly integrated into their sites like World of Warcraft's dance battle system and Gmail's CADIE auto responder system. However, a real life sighting topped them all for me.

It came in the form of a utility truck with a huge name scrawled across the side, "Big Johnson Plumbing." Unless they painted the truck just for the day, that was the genuine name of a company that had been doing business for some time. And if you don't see what's funny about a plumbing company named Big Johnson, it's time to loosen up.

Condoms on your butt

When it comes to media, placement is everything, and while CondomDepot.com’s sponsorship of various UFC fighters may hit the right audience, the specific placement of the company’s logo might raise an eyebrow or two. So where did they put it?

Right across a UFC fighter’s butt. I know there’s not much space on a fighter to put an ad- you essentially have use of his shorts, unless you’re going to tattoo him (not unheard of) . But I think there are certain implications to slapping “CondomDepot.com” across the backside of a sweaty man who’s wrestling another sweaty man while neither of them are wearing many clothes. Always carefully consider your sponsorships.