Skip to main content

Hi Boo - another unbelievably stupid re-brand

Many will remember how we had a short and extremely expensive (not for the brand ID people, who laughed all the way to Fred Shred's office) opportunity to purchase stamps and postal orders from Consignia, the suited, overpaid and underutilised powers that be having decided that to buy stamps and postal orders from a business called the Post Office was no longer sustainable.

These great people felt the consumer had become fed-up visiting a Post Office, and would much prefer to visit an infinitely superior-named Consignia Office instead. Although, despite its new name, the Consignia Office would continue to sell stamps and postal orders, but refuse point blank to sell any Consignias.

This lack of availability of Consignias for purchase by those members of the public wishing to purchase them from their local Consignia Offce, may go a long way to explain why the Consignia name lasted about 4 minutes before re-emerging from the howls of laughter and bucketloads of derision as the re-renamed Post Office.

Now Hibu is arriving. Or should I say Hibü, for those who can spell - or be bothered spelling it - by holding down the Alt key on their keyboard while typing 129 on their numerical pads to produce the ü with an umlaut above it. Those with a combined querty/numberpad, as is the case for many laptops and most netbooks, will be breaking the brand guidelines from the word go. As for smartphones and pad things........!

Back in May, the company chief executive of the newly proposed Hibü, Mike Pocock, admitted that the name was meaningless, although he did backtrack as quickly as he could to insist the word tells a story and the new 'soft-shouldered' edges of the logo (hurrah for the brand ID people again!) 'represents the people behind the identity' and that as a word, it is no more meaningless than Google or Yahoo when they were introduced.

Oh sorry! You asked what a Hib Alt+129 ü is.

It's going to be the soon to be former Yell. The little yellow finger that does the walking for Yellow Pages online. Yellow Pages itself won't be  renamed, but you'll no longer be using yell.com. You'll head for the more sensible Hibü, umlaut and all.

Do have a gander at the logo. The corporate ID peoples' palms must have no skin left from rubbing them together with glee (a teen television programme they were presumably able to watch in its entirety after their lengthy 3 minutes coming up with this new, all-singing, all-dancing, cutting-edge, truly-representative logo) when the saw Yell coming.

Unless I am misinformed and it has indeed been designed by a staff member's 8 year old.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The "Win a Million" free scratch card newspaper inserts

One of those three-panel "Win a Million" scratchcards fell out of my newspaper this morning. Not a major or in anyway newsworthy event in itself, but I must admit my surprise. I didn't think anyone bothered with them anymore, or, to be a little more technical, I didn't think anyone was taken in by them anymore. Firstly, it actually is printed on the bottom of each panel that "Every card has a set of 3 matching symbols, 2 matching symbols and no matching symbols". Right, so you are going to 'win', half-win and not win respectively. Then, while the prize list is somewhat impressive with 1x£1m, 1x£100k, 2x£20k, 3x£10k and other things like holidays, tablet PC's city breaks all the way down to 1000 "faux" fashion watches, 1000 salon  makeovers and 1000xVIP Thames cruises. Now should I be stupid enough to spend the £1.53 a minute for the 6 minute phone call to claim my prize (that's almost a tenner, for those of you without cal...

Chancellor's letter of apology to Bob Diamond of Barclays

Thanks to my contacts at the new News International business "Phonetaps'R'Us", I was exclusively sent a copy of a letter sent to the Chief Executive of Barclays Bank, Bob Diamond, from the Chancellor yesterday. "Dear Bob Trusting you and yours are well. Listen mate. Sorry the F inancially S tupid A sses wrote to your bank yesterday to demand £290million as a fine. It's nothing personal, and just because your bank head office people are a bunch of dishonest, thieving bastards, I thought there was no reason to carry on that way and fine you. I made this clear to the FSA yesterday as soon as I heard the news. I told them that the taxpayer would have been more than happy to bail you out. And also. Look mate. Sorry you've had to give up your bonus this year. It must have come as quite a shock, and was a wonderful thing for you to volunteer to do. I only hope you've put something by from the £17million you received last year. No doubt the bank pay...

Are Camelot dim, dysfunctional, liars or just plain greedy?

There can be no denying that UK lottery operators Camelot are on to a good thing. Especially the overpaid management. They have been reaping the benefits of the franchise for years now - a franchise that in essence, has been licenced by the government to print money. However, I can't quite make up my mind whether the management of the Lotto are dim, dysfunctional, liars or just plain greedy, although the cynic in me answers the question when I consider the chief Executive of Camelot was complaining last year that the annual bonus on her not inconsiderable 7-figure salary had been reduced (conveniently forgetting her 18 year sojourn to date at Camelot has produced a pension we mere mortals can only dream about. How about the poor soldiers, CEO Dianne Thompson, who come back from the far-east minus a leg and have to legally fight for compensation that doesn't even touch what you earn less than a month? And they don't receive CBE's for their troubles either !). Irres...