This past weekend, during one of several adventures with rooftop ice dams that involved climbing out the window of an attic dormer, a bit of text happened to catch my eye, peaking out from beneath a small hole in the attic floor. After pulling up the floor board, I was delighted to find copies of the The Boston Sunday Globe and the Haverhill Evening Gazette from 1937.

What fun to read the news of that day, and all the cool ads too! Here’s a sample ad from a local Chevrolet-Buick dealership of the time, located at what is now a parking lot for a Rite Aid pharmacy.

For some time now I have been growing increasingly turned off by the ubiquitous and ambiguous use of the term “brand”. As a result, I was delighted to stumble upon a recent entry in Russel Davies’ blog Advertising Practitioner, entitled Branding – the even more dismal science, in which he examines “how the idea of a brand has been so devalued by overuse, over-claim and over-thinking.”

I particularly agreed with his declaration of the simple, yet oft-forgotten truth that “Not everything is a brand.” Davies suggests that ideas to the contrary originated in the mid 80′s, fueled by a belief that branding was the future of business. When businesses began to recognize and record brand value, an industry of consultants arose, eager to charge a lot of money to provide advice on brands. Davies writes, “And it was, of course, in their interests to say that everything was a brand. Yup, that’s a brand, we can advise you on that.”

From brand to logo – or from logo to brand?

Sometimes you read something that really hits home and expresses your own thoughts on a subject in a way far better than you could have yourself. Such is the case with this, my favorite highlight from Davies’ post:

The way forward

I think it’s the hubris we have to get rid of. Launching logos is not the way forward. A logo should be repository of meaning, not a substitute for it. And you have to build that meaning, not borrow it. We should be announcing smart and interesting things and then saying; by the way, this is the logo for it.

Not surprisingly, as one who designs logos professionally, I firmly believe in the value of an effective logo. In a visual media-driven world, a good logo aids recognition and awareness among audiences and is a huge asset to effective marketing. That said, that value quickly disappears in the absence of any real meaning, interest and authenticity behind the logo.