This weeks branding news digest

New Visual Identity for European Championships

UEFA have announced that the new Euro 2012 logo and visual identity will be unveiled next week. The brief was to create a positioning based on the concept of ‘old rivals’ meeting again.

The brand overhaul has come about because the tournaments sponsors wanted a more defined sponsorship proposition and UEFA were keen to differentiate the Euro’s from things like the Champs League.

I’ll be interested to see what the new branding looks like.  It’s going to be the first in a series, so subsequent years competitions will have the same basic design and lettering but a new image to depict the host country of that year’s tournament.

I’m surprised that Fifa haven’t done something like this before now for the World Cup logos.  The last few, including the South Africa 2010 logo, have all held the circular World Cup image badge but don’t particularly fit a brand image – remember the dodgy laughing faces of the Germany 2006 logo?

The official launch of the new UEFA European Championships brand identity will be in the Ukraine on 14^th December.

Fly V to the Moon

This week Richard Branson unveiled the branding for his new SpaceShipTwo, part of the Virgin Galactic brand.

SpaceShipTwo is quite different from SpaceShipOne.  It’s quite a clean design and carries the fantastically cosmic blue eye logo of Virgin Galactic on the W-shaped wing; it looks suitably futuristic!

At £130k a ticket, you’d better start saving now if you want to travel on it, I’d have a look at it online first!

Key Themes for the Decade’s Ad’s?  Celebs and Nostalgia

Ad agency McCann Erickson have released some interesting research, it’s all about key themes in advertising throughout the noughties and revealed that there hasn’t quite been the theme of cutting edge innovation that one may have expected.

366 people were surveyed, with the results enforcing the predominance of two main trends; celebrities and heritage brands.

Perhaps in a nostalgic bid to reminisce over ‘better days’, brands such as Cadbury Wispa and frozen desert Arctic Roll have made successful reappearances on the market, whilst brands such as Milkyway and Warburton’s have reverted back to wistful style TV campaigns.

Celebrities were the other key theme in advertising over the decade.  Celebrity ambassadors have been used in many high profile campaigns, with Girls Aloud advertising Kit-Kat, Halle Berry becoming the face of Revlon and David Beckham endorsing…more or less everything!

Of course this isn’t a particularly new phenomenon, Joan Collins fronted Cinzano in the 70’s and Bob Hoskins famously advertised for BT in the 80’s, but this decade the public surveyed noticed the saturation of celebrities in advertising.

Cast your mind back over the last 10 years and see if you agree with the research.

The Top 50 Brands Making the Best Use of Facebook

Straight-talking business and economics site The Big Money have named their ‘Facebook 50’.

It’s basically a ranking of the top 50 brands utilising Facebook most effectively.  The list has been compiled using various determining factors such as fan numbers, page growth and interaction with page fans.

There are few surprises in the list but it’s a really interesting read.  The number one brand in the ‘Facebook 50’ has a fan to thank for their success!  He started the page with no agenda and watched it grow towards fan numbers of four million!

Take a look if you’ve got a spare few minutes, it might even give you some inspiration on how to boost your own Facebook page.