Monday, July 14, 2014

Airbnb's New Logo – An Epic Marketing Blunder

Airbnb just unveiled its new logo called “the Belo”. In the color Magenta, it strives to combine the concept of Yahoo’s distinctive purple and Nike’s famous Swoosh.

Airbnb enables users to list their homes on the web and rent them out to guests. The company wants to add more sharing products and services to its offerings, such as surfing lessons.

For its rebranding, Airbnb turned to DesignStudio, a young London-based global branding and design agency, that has as its mission statement: “By applying creative, critical thinking to these different channels, we change people’s perceptions and create the brands of the future.”

For a whole year, DesignStudio worked on the rebranding project. It conducted extensive user research and dispatched teams to more than a dozen countries to interview hosts and guests to find out what they like about Airbnb. DesignStudio also conducted detailed surveys of comparable brands such as IBM, Facebook and the Red Cross.

The result? Bélo (Belonging - Airbnb’s new logo that was launched with a lot of PR hype. The logo is in magenta, looks like the love child of a Google maps pin, a heart and a bent paper clip. It’s a matter of taste if you like it or not.

HomeSweetHome one. But it’s the uncanny resemblance with the Automation Anywhere logo that started a Twitter storm.

It's baffling that after such an extensive research and design phase, none of the creative geniuses at the agency used a simple online image search to check for similar logos to make sure that the proposed new one would be unique.

Airbnb made a gigantic marketing mistake by not running the new logo by their lawyers. The consequences for Airbnb?

However, the new logo is almost identical to several existing logos such as the
  • Legal action. I am sure that Automation Anywhere will sue Airbnb very soon.
  • Brand damage. The company is already the laughing stock in many online magazines and (of course) the social media.
  • Using an agency that wasted so much of Airbnb’s budget to come up with a copycat logo.
  • Investing more time and money to rebrand again with a new agency.
  • Removing the Bélo from all existing collateral and merchandise.
(Image: New Airbnb logo on the left, existing Automation Anywhere logo on the right)

Sunday, July 06, 2014

DKNY Ramadan Collection – A Stroke Of Marketing Genius?

DKNY, part of the LVMH Group, has just launched a new fashion line. The DKNY Ramadan Collection consists of halal couture. The stunning designs cover arms and legs and have modest necklines.

The collection (styled by two prominent Middle Eastern fashionistas Yalda Golsharifi, fashion editor of Styles Magazine, and Tamara Al Gabbani, a fashion designer in Dubai) fuses high fashion with conservative design. Both women are popular bloggers and also modeled the collection including for the #DKNYRamadan campaign.

The 12-piece collection includes summer favorites with a conservative yet modern slant such as long, flowing dresses and skirts, printed tops and floor-length skirts, classic black-and-white separates, jumpsuits and pants and long-sleeved and three-quarter-length jackets and shirts.

Each piece conveys the modesty many Middle Eastern women strive for without skimping on fashion. Pakistani writer Bina Shah lauded the collection in The Independent stating that the clothes “walk the fine line between cosmopolitan and conservative, luxurious and ostentatious. The fabrics drape around the body, encasing the curves that nature gave Middle Eastern women without making them obvious, or attempting to disguise them in bag-like abayas.” High praise indeed!

The timing is impeccable: Ramadan, the holy month of daylight fasting observed my Muslims around the world started on July 5 and will end on July 28.

It’s the first time that a New York-based brand launched a regionalized collection and campaign. The pieces are only available in stores in the Middle East, but you can check out the full 12-look collection at dkny.com/dknyramadan.

But the question remains: did DKNY make a smart marketing move?