You might have read my recent post about a podcast Chris Gee has done with me about the state of the design management profession. Chris is a very passionate blogger (“thepreparedmind.com”) and the principal of CUBEinteractive/NY. Chris set up his blog to seek for arguments and credibility in order “to gain more respect from the business world”.
Last week Chris has written an open letter to the Wall Street Journal regarding an article entitled ““Firm Offers Design Talent For Logos at Bargain Prices” which dealt about LogoWorks. For a while there have been rumours that LogoWorks might have sold logos which they’ve copied from already existing sketches and designs. Not only Chris, but also other graphic designers are trying to create a public awareness of this kind of breaching the copyrights of others. (You’ll find an engaging discussion on Chris’ blog)
While this is already a juicy story tonight Michael Wagner directed me to the blog of Laura Ries, the daughter of the quite well known “Marketing Positioning” Guru Al Ries (together with Jack Trout). Recently Laura has been a member of a price jury called “Entrepreneur’s Ugliest Logo Contest” and in her blog posting (which Laura deleted some minutes ago!) she is praising LogoWorks in a fashion which demonstrates a quite limited (but as I suspect quite common marketing viewpoint) understanding of the design discipline.
On the other hand making mistakes is part of human nature and for me it would be only natural to correct a previously false judgement. In particular one would guess that marketing professionals like Laura Ries know how to deal with such situations especially when you’ve used your blog to spread the news. – Nil Return!
Interestingly while writing this posting the according entry from Laura’s blog has been removed without any further notice ;-) Fortunately I’ve made a screen capture of the posting and parts of the comments which you can download here (approx. 285 KB).
Well, this is not the first case where bloggers underrated the power of weblogs in terms of opportunities and threats they offer: Last Fall Kryptonite has been the “victim” of consumer blogging power as well. Read the full story at Wired News.
Finally, I hope Laura will consider re-thinking her perspective on the “value destruction” LogoWorks and similar companies are causing. After all Kryptonite learned their lesson and Chris: May the force be with you!
