Tag: branding

There’s actually a really easy solve for this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In very important newsworthy news: The Ohio State University attempts to trademark the letters “OSU,” and Oklahoma State University plans on opposing it

Naturally, Ohio State would attempt something like this, because if there’s any school more arrogant and self-important about their branding it’s Ohio State.  Forget about all the other schools that use the acronym, they don’t really actually exist, or are remotely relevant in the world of collegiate sports.

Except that Oregon State University isn’t completely garbage at football, and actually has a pretty decent basketball program for both men and women.  Except that Oklahoma State University isn’t a terrible football program in their own right. 

But none of them are really OSUs.

Regardless of how this stupid pissing match ends up, there really is a really easy solve for this little spat: play for it.

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Wait, JetBlue is the bad guy here?

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I have been on a lot of airplanes.  I’ve had wonderful flights, namely where the seat(s) adjacent to me have been empty, and I’ve been able to exhale and bask in the luxury of space, and once in a blue moon, I’ve had the opportunity to sit in first class and enjoy a cocktail or two. 

However, most of the time, I’ve had less-than-wonderful flights, whether it’s been on account of assholes who don’t understand the rules of the armrests, shitheads who pack too much shit and clog up all available space, or fat fucks who ooze over armrests, seats, aisles and encroach upon the personal space of everyone around them.  Such is more common than not, because the vast majority of people are simply stupid and have zero understanding of not just airplane etiquette, but just how to conduct one’s self when rammed into tight quarters with other miserable travelers.

Amidst my travels, I have been no stranger to the unruly child in the row behind me that thinks the seat in front of them is the FIFA World Cup and decides to mash the kick buttons like they’re Chun-Li.  Under the standby circumstances I’ve flown so frequently in the past, there was little I could actually do about this, since I was vastly less human than my counterparts that paid substantially more than I did, but over the last year of actually paying real fares to fly, I have been no stranger to the turnaround and glare at the negligent parents who neglect bad behavior.

Needless to say, seat kicking ranks somewhere in between being too fat and insisting on existing in one seat and releasing snakes on a plane, when it comes to the worst people on an airplane.  Which is why it’s so easy to applaud JetBlue when they removed a family of five from an airplane after a one-year old kicked the seat in front of it.

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Go G-Gobblers!

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Surprising nobody: the Gwinnett Braves announce finalists for the team renaming contest and they all suck:

  • Gwinnett Buttons
  • Gwinnett Big Mouths
  • Gwinnett Gobblers
  • Gwinnett Hush Puppies
  • Gwinnett Lambchops
  • Gwinnett Sweet Teas

I mean, it was a forgone conclusion that the new name was going to be a PC-friendly, vanilla, uncreative and probably determined regardless of votes, but c’mon, these are pretty particularly poor as far as options go.  Sure, passive-aggressive griefing options like Tax Burdens and classic no-brainers like the G-Spots weren’t going to get through, but surely some way better options must have fallen by the wayside in this shitty contest.

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When to not fuck with Wawa

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TL;DR: Wawa suing New Jersey convenience store named Dawa for infringement of copyright, citing that their name and wordmark is too similar to theirs

I’m torn – on one side of the field is Wawa, the convenience chain that I went to a lot when I got my license, whose sandwiches and iced tea I love more than many people on the planet.  But on the other side, Dawa is Korean owned and operated, and I always have a soft spot in my heart for my people just trying to make a living and minding their own business.

Ultimately, as much as it pains me to take the side against Koreans, the reality is that they don’t really have much ground to stand on when it comes to going up against a vastly larger company such as Wawa.  And honestly, Wawa’s not wrong, since Dawa’s storefront and wordmark are pretty much copied straight out of Wawa’s identity.

The defense isn’t wrong, and “dawa” in Korean (다와) is roughly translated to “come all,” which is a pretty positive name for a convenience store, but the unfortunate reality is that when the day is over, Wawa came first, and they have the high ground when it comes to who gets to use the goofy-sounding word and what all imitators are based off of.

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Why change a solid logo?

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Supposedly, there are rumblings that the NBA needs to change its logo.  The Undefeated has made a game of potential silhouettes to replace Jerry West; naturally being The Undefeated, ten of them are black guys, and then Larry Bird, almost like an obligation to option out a non-black guy as to not seem too obvious. But the question I really have is, why??  Why change the NBA logo?  There’s nothing at all wrong with it!

This isn’t like the Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves or any other sports team name that triggers white guilt and is always in the conversation of needing to be changed because they’re construed as offensive.  This isn’t like the Vietnamese skin care center that uses a logo that’s too infringe-y to an existing copyright and needs to be changed, so people don’t mistake them as manufacturers of zombie serum.  Or this isn’t like, Wendy’s, whose prior wild western-looking type face made their brand look as old as the era in which the font best represents.

The NBA logo is an icon in itself, and has no need for change, especially for no good reason other than the sake of change.  It doesn’t help when Jerry West, the alleged basis of the silhouette in the logo is all white-guilty and is clamoring for a change as well, but thankfully the NBA themselves continues to deny it as to deny leverage to West.

But really, there’s no need for change.  What for?  MLB has never changed their logo, and you better fucking believe that the NFL isn’t going to change their logo.  Stability and longevity is what gives strength to logos, and the NBA would be flushing 70+ years of tradition and history down the toilet because the world feels like change should occur on some basis other than never, for everything, including long standing identities and brands. 

Brands that want to last and thrive know how to commit and stick with something for the long haul.  The NBA changing their logo for no real good reason is a stupid idea, and I hope they never actually do it.

Judging a book by its title

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When it comes to Chinese food, I’m not particularly picky.  I mean, let’s be honest here, Chinese food in America is about as American as McDonald’s is, so going to Royal China in Atlanta isn’t going to be terribly different from Lucky Golden Buddha in Seattle or China King 3 in Oklahoma.  Furthermore, I usually favor my Chinese food either delivered to my house so I can be lazy, or going to a buffet where I can stuff my face like a miserable fat fuck and regret it terribly later on in the day.  There’s almost no appeal at all when it comes to going to a Chinese restaurant where the food is not unlimited.

Until I discovered the existence of this place.  Where the name of the restaurant alone is enough to elicit an opinion of “no fucking way,” and eventually “I want to try this place out if they’re so audacious to have such an iconic name that triggers so much nostalgia.”

I mean seriously, when you’re going to name your restaurant Double Dragon, you have to know you’re going to be putting a bullseye on yourself from snarky gamers that are 30-years old and older at this point.  You also have to know that you’re seriously not trying hard to hide the fact that you’re seriously infringing on some copyrights, from the name itself, to the logo they’re using, but then again, it’s hard to really nail down who owns the rights to the franchise these days; so maybe there’s no concerns that Technos or Atlus or whomever develops and publishes the game is going to bother coming after them.

Seriously, the logo could be slapped onto an NES cart and look like a legit edition to the series, it’s so blatantly based on the video game franchise.  The dragons are even the fucking colors of Billy and Jimmy. 

Regardless, a Chinese restaurant in Atlanta named Double Dragon.  I think that might be kind of racist, but the game is a Japanese development featuring white guys named Lee, and dragons are so very prominent in Chinese culture, so it too is hard to really nail down.  But I am most definitely piqued, and it’s now on my list of places that I would like to try.  If anything at all, this is kind of the closest thing I might ever see to restaurants named after video games, like I often hope to find an Indian restaurant called Yoga Fire.

The zombie apocalypse starts in Vietnam

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This is how it starts: skin care center in Vietnam conveniently happens to be using the exact same logo as the Umbrella Corporation, the “fictional” company from the Resident Evil franchise responsible for “accidentally” creating the T-Virus which started the global zombie apocalypse

In other words, UMBRELLA IS REAL AND IS IN VIETNAM.  Start stocking up on ammunition, first aid spray and green and red herbs.  Engineer some convoluted locks and puzzles based on chess pieces, piano sonatas, and shattered crests of mythical creatures.  And start writing out your thoughts in diaries and start scattering pages around your homes, with discreet clues on how to solve your puzzles and unlock your locks so that Jill, Chris, Rebecca and Leon can find your shit after we all die and then reanimate.

This is pretty close to how the plot started in the movie franchise, with Umbrella’s public guise being one that started off with cosmetics and health wellness while privately dabbling in the world of viral pathogens and some sinister science to ultimately be weaponized and sold for ridiculous profits.  It’s a little too close to home that a clinic in Vietnam is all about the skin care, but happens to be using the verbatim exact same logo as the Umbrella Corporation.

I guess the Capcom conspiracy theorists who wrote out the plot to Resident Evil 6 were a little off in estimating that a zombie outbreak would be in China, but that’s still close enough to Vietnam to believe that maybe these hair-brained video game plots couldn’t be based on some sort of potentially lurking truth.

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