Spotted on the fridge at my local Nando’s charcoal chicken shop. It took me a split second to get what was on the sticker - it was a great bit of entertainment whilst I was waiting for my food.

The sticker was discreet; almost like an after thought. It is part of the integrated Nando’s branding/advertising approach which I reckon works quite well. Their …

NRMA Insurance is running a series of simple TV and radio ads at the moment. All they do is list stats about how many claims they have paid out, and how quickly, in response to recent floods in parts of New South Wales.

Nothing about how much they care about customer service, or how many years they have been in business, or how they are committed …

Small things can and do make a difference. I found myself smiling at this label on a new box of Splenda today:

Exceeding a customer’s expectations, making a small difference in someone’s day, need not be a hard thing.

Chinatown, Sydney, Australia. July 2007

My article on logo design in flyingsolo resulted in quite a few comments. Here’re my additional thoughts as a result.

The Bank of Queensland peeling poster

I did not know the Bank of Queensland logo was meant to represent the outline of the state - so thanks for pointing that out Greg from Toowoomba. This illustrates how hard it is for symbols to be read “correctly” …

The marketing material accompanying Lenovo’s new super-exclusive Thinkpad Reserve Edition is a great example of how increasingly, differentiation is about the soft stuff, the services; and less so about the quality or power of the hardware.

Take a look at the PDF Spec Sheet. Despite it being called a spec sheet, less than a quarter of the document was actually devoted to technical information. …

I saw a TV piece on the pet food contamination scandal in the US recently which affected many dogs and cats. It was interesting to note the initial confusion amongst consumers as the contamination affect many different brands across different price points and market positions. This is because like many other mass manufacture-based industries, the pet food sector sources its base products from relatively few manufacturers …

“A city stripped of advertising. No Posters. No flyers. No ads on buses. No ads on trains. No Adshels, no 48-sheets, no nothing.” São Paulo is doing just that. “…a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder…” said writer Roberto Pompeu de Toledo.

Read the BusinessWeek article: São Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising.

Is this part of the increasing backlash …

Artist Matt Siber’s Compare To… project is a neat visual illustration of product category and brand signifiers beyond the logo. We don’t need much info to know what these everyday products are.

Such a situation is possible because of the highly commoditised nature of these products. Brand recognition is arguable less powerful a buying incentive as is price and availability.

Or accidentally funny?

Snapped at a parking station: