3 thoughts for the week of July 12, 2010 (are all the best ideas taken?)

In 1899, Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. patent office said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented”. This week, we’ve taken some time to ponder a similar question. Are all the great ideas already taken?

1. Is it possible to create a simple, yet one of a kind logo anymore? Whether verbalized or not, that very thought has been permeating the 3thought office all week. You see, we have a client who wants to rebrand themselves and they chose to start by paying us to create a simple, unique and hopefully memorable logo for them. We’ve been busy pushing pixels, experimenting with shapes, colors, fonts and sizes and everything else that comes along with creating a logo. We’ve come up with lots of great ideas, but occasionally one of us looks at the other’s screen and says, “haven’t I seen that before?“, to which the other typically curse and spends the next 2-3 minutes googling to check to see if they were correct. The process can be infuriating because over the course of time, all the simple shapes and names have already been taken. Look at some of the great timeless logos. For instance, Macys. It’s just a Red star with the word Macys next to it. No illustration of a woman shopping, or a storefront in 3d. Apple is just an apple. IBM is blue type with white lines. ABC is a black circle with the letters ABC in it and Nike is a swoosh. All simple, all classic, all already taken. So what new logos have you seen that are both simple and memorable? We’ll give our favorites in an upcoming post.

   

2. Speaking of good ideas. We came up with a good one this week. It’s called “Walmart BINGO”. A simple concept where upon entering your local Walmart, you distribute Bingo cards to whoever you’re with, and mark off the squares until someone gets BINGO. The cards would have things you might see at your local Walmart such as:
   • Person wearing camouflage
   • Child without shoes
   • Mullet
   • Elderly person on motorized scooter

   The only problem is… Walmart Bingo already exists. We even found an iPhone app. So, our dreams of making millions off our one of kind unique and awesome idea have been shattered. And if you can’t come up with a unique idea, you can always do a variation or do it better. We’re now thinking Mall Bingo, Campus Bingo, Bar Room Bingo, and even Wedding Bingo where you’ll need to spot things like: Drunk Uncles, Blue socks with black pants, adults hiding smoking from their parents and family members with inappropriate cleavage.

3. And lastly this week, we’d like to salute a company who’s done something fairly unique lately, and congratulate them for taking a risk with their marketing. This company is Old Spice. Their commercials featuring Isaiah Mustafa (the towel-wearing, backwards-horse-riding, swan-diving-into-hot-tubs guy) are fun, funny, memorable, unique and absolutely brilliant. Here’s their latest masterpiece.The real reason we’re bring this up this week is because they’ve really stepped up their game again with an awesome and soon to be imitated social media campaign. If any of our readers haven’t seen this, here are a few of our favorites: 1, 2, 3. So, hats off to you Old Spice for your use great use of social media and fan interaction. We aspire to make our clients as clever and memorable as your marketing.