HP, a leading computer manufacturing company in the US has chosen to update its logo. While the current HP logo is simple and easily recognized, HP felt that a new logo would help to reposition itself as the leader in personal computing technology.

The challenge for any logo redesign (and HP in particular) is to retain certain aspects of the original design so that customers can still recognize the brand while understanding that the brand is committed to maintaining relevancy.

For HP’s new logo, designers chose to strike the circular background  and employ a unique element involving the use of the 13 degree angle and its relation to the “forward slash”.

“The defining signature of the system is the 13° angle. 13° represents HP’s spirit as a company, driven forward by ingenuity and optimism about the future and a belief in human progress. It also refers to the world of computing by recalling the forward slash used in programming. 13° exists within the brand identity, in the graphic language, product design and UI. ”

– Moving Brands

While some have contested that the new logo is “not quite there”, HP has definitely taken a step in the right direction, shedding unwanted curves that detract from company goals. Whether or not the new logo will resonate with the consumer base remains to be seen.

A new study from Yahoo/BBDO (Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn) reveals that 95% of consumers “crave” engagement with brands.  To increase success in marketing endeavors,  interacting with customers is a must and there needs to be a balance throughout the three new media channels. Paid, owned and earned media need to tell a story.

Paid media is the friendly introduction. It is the primary source for brand awareness and information among consumers.

• Nearly three out of four respondents said they got information about a brand through paid media.

• 82% said that they would shut out a brand if they deem it intrusive or annoying

While aggressive advertising may seem like an effective method, it may do more harm than good and distance consumers from the brand in question.

Owned media should be thought of as the relationship building stage. This is the stage where consumers get closer to their brands. About us pages, quirky details and interesting news about the brand help consumers to discern genuine brands from competitors.

• 96% of consumers want to know product details, price and other quantitative information
• 45% are looking for interesting stories and history about the brand

Finally, earned media is akin to relationship maintenance. While many brands attract consumers through paid and earned ads, several fail to engage them on a consistent basis.

• 77% of respondents want brands to be engaging and responsive

• 79% say that it’s important for brands to be self aware and more genuine

While new media is still an inexact science, studies are continuously showing the benefits of telling a story rather than just trying to ensure that a message is heard. Consumers like brands that they can relate to and will send their dollars to a competitor if they are deemed “too intrusive”.

Ever have those days where you wake up and just grin because you know you are going to get your hands dirty in the nitty gritty world that is data retrieval?  Well I am actually having one of those months.  I am currently working on a project for a large firm where I actually have to pull legacy data from an old MRP system and convert it to the wonderful world of SQL.  Sounds boring but it’s actually a great exercise.  I play my music and lose myself in the careful process of retrieving, cleaning, fixing and converting the data one table at a time.  I am extremely anal when it comes to data conversions and that always means the rest of the programming department is tapping their foot and not so patiently waiting.  I can’t help it, it’s my nature to look at something from every possible angle (remind me to tell you the story about an iron).  When it comes to data what usually happens is, I will convert a huge block and then discover that one of the data sets contains erroneous information.  This usually happens during the cleaning process.  At this point I can try and fix the data manually or write a routine that fixes it on the client system and re-export it all over again.  I always do the later for the simple fact that if I spot one issue then others like it may crop up causing the process to take even longer.  I’ve actually gotten to a point where if everything goes smoothly I start to worry, lol. Like I said, anal.  The best part about this project is that we have also been hired to write the application that will store and display the data to users around the world. What a fantastic opportunity to be able to migrate a customer’s business system from a legacy computer system and then give them a shiny new web based application that does it even better.