Being a critic is easy.

Partisan Advertising was recently hired to work on a logo and branding design.

We were recommended to the client by our good friends at Digital Masters. After numerous passionate meetings, held in insanely hot and humid coffee shops, and after the quote was drummed down by 25%, we were given the go-ahead to start.

After 52 hours of time (including meetings, travel, and everything else), tracked on our third favourite piece of software, Time Doctor, we finished the logo design. We presented a series of bespoke designs, complete with executions of what the logo would look like across a range of media, covering everything from a web page to the good old business card to the App icon thousands of people would see on their smartphones.

After almost two days of dead silence following the presentation, we received an email response: “I have spoken with the board regarding the excellent logo & branding designs you sent through and number #1 has been the favourite across the board. We feel the logo is a perfect fit for the company and the speech bubbles emphasise the idea of connectivity and dialogue we are wanting to establish between our users.”

Hoorah, great success! Let’s crack open the Bollinger. Well, not exactly.

When the client presented the approved logo to their web design company, everything came off the rails. In less than 15 minutes, the logo was flat out rejected, the client’s positive decision had been overturned based on the input from their web designers, and Partisan Advertising was asked to leave the playground.

Rejection is a common speed bump found in the world of logo design (and the world at large). This is not the first time it’s happened to me and I’m certain it won’t be the last.

I can imagine that by the time you've finished reading this post, thousands of logo rejections will have taken place across the globe. If you consider how economical and easy it is to commission a logo through websites like fiver.com or freelancer.com, you can easily see how quickly logo design has become a downhill race to cheapness and uneducated decision-making. With so many options available, and so many logos flying past our eyes every day, how do we make a qualified decision about what logo is right for us? 

I recently read a blog that said the most you should spend on a logo is $500. Apparently, any more than that was pointless. Legend has it that Nike paid $36 dollars for their swoosh logo. Based on the aforementioned blog, Nike got the bargain of the millennium considering that today their brand is valued at $24 billion dollars.

But bitching and moaning about being rejected isn’t the point of this blog post. Nor is how much you should pay for a logo. The point is that you must always be true to yourself, regardless of where, what, and how. And this logo design rejection reminded me of that.

At Partisan Advertising we have a very black-and-white approach. The idea of grey areas is alien to us. Our business strategy, when conceived in 2010, was built around a simple philosophy: The advertising agency for everyone is the advertising agency for no one.

Whenever I’ve been true to this philosophy it has paid huge returns. I’m not talking about financially – money is never the object; I’m talking about spiritually and emotionally. I’m talking about the reward of recognising and honouring your beliefs. I’m talking about the goose flesh that cascades warmly over your skin when something triggers the awareness in your mind that you are being true to what you hold as sacrosanct. 

And true to form, without fail, every time Partisan has stepped away from our core beliefs, we’ve paid a terrible price. And this logo design job is a perfect example. The company in question has a business philosophy that contradicts ours in every way: We will be everything to everyone.

When two diametrically opposed philosophies meet, the only outcome can be chaos.

You might ask why I didn’t pull the plug on this job before it got started? It seems so obvious and all the signs were there, so why did I carry on with it?  I’m not sure how to answer that.

I think sometimes I push onwards hoping to convert people to my way of thinking. I mean, I’m always right, aren’t I? When I forget my beliefs, this push for conversion goes way too far, and the next thing you know I’m running into a coffee shop with two kilos of C4 strapped to my chest yelling “This logo is good! This logo is glorious!” After chaos comes madness.

Maybe I did it for the money? But I said it before: money is never the object, it just gives chaos a place to hide. After all, I must feed the beast that fuels my belief structure and pays wages. And that’s the conundrum. Which would I rather have: starving and sleeping under Grafton Bridge because my beliefs are so rigid, or living in comfort in a million-dollar home because I’m flexible, and wise enough, to know just how much leash to give?

In a meeting a few weeks ago, I said to a client that I have no idea how to do a “cheap” job. Because all my creative work is based around thoughts, experiences and ideas, it’s impossible to dial down my brain to do lesser work. Some people may however remark that I haven’t been able to dial my brain up to do any decent work (criticism = easy = fun).  It’s simple when it comes to manufacturing: use cheaper materials, outsource to India, make more, charge less; someone, somewhere will buy what you’re selling. But how can that be done in my world?

The only thing that separates Partisan from the throng of other agencies out there is our people and our beliefs.

Partisan and our competitors have many things in common: We all have access to the same computers, the same resources, the same world. But our biggest difference, and the most important one, is that Partisan’s beliefs are different. So different that we scare people. So different that we make our clients millions and millions of dollars every year. So different that a logo design matters as much to us as anything else in the world.

Without beliefs, you have nothing.

The crux of the scenario however is that having beliefs, and standing by them, is vital but at the end of the day it’s just as important to have someone who believes in you as much as you believe in them. This is true not just in logo design but in everyday life.

I want to thank my logo design client for reminding me of this.

Make up your mind about makeup

The use of makeup originally started because of hygiene and evolved as one of many methods used to enhance beauty. Today, it is a multi-billion-dollar business. As sad as it is, more and more people think they’re just not beautiful without it. Is advertising responsible for this? Or should we all blame Cleopatra?

In my years of existence, I’ve discovered that girls who wear makeup become younger and younger. I once was a preschool teacher and I had a 5-year-old student who would often tell me what makeup she’s wearing that day. There was a pinch in my heart when she answered my question as to why she wears make-up: “because I don’t look pretty without it.” This girl would also tell me she’s on a diet and showed me her collection of pre-teen magazines with her favourite child models in them.

Let’s debunk this situation, shall we? She’s a beautiful 5-year-old girl who’s straight up insecure and she already has a collection of magazines with other girls she wants to look like. If you’ve read “Advertising: A source of insecurity”, you’d know that advertising did affect me when I was younger. Can we say the same for makeup advertisers? But makeup has been there long before people began to advertise and commercialise it.

It’s become another thing that doesn’t need to be advertised because a lot of people would buy makeup regardless of its price, the harm it may cause to the skin, whether it’s been tested on animals or not, and so on. But the advertising message that is put out regarding makeup is the idea that you will look like a certain model or celebrity if you use these products – ensuring that you’ll be worthy to be on the cover of magazines, with millions of likes and followers on social media, and all that jazz.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people who enjoy it, are passionate for it, and treat the face as a canvas but what I want to tell you today is with or without makeup – YOU ARE A MASTERPIECE! You were born into a society that emphasises face value, and you now live in a world full of advertising that profits from this. But the question is, does society dictate what companies are allowed to advertise or do we look at advertisements and set it as the standard for modern day beauty?

Make-up isn’t a quick fix for insecurity. Insecurity is something every one of us should deal with, admit, and hopefully one day let go of.

At the end of the day, you still get to choose what to believe – and what I believe is we all have something good about ourselves. Being the only you in a world with billions of people, being unique is such beautiful thing. So why do we need to conform? Looking beyond what society and advertising dictates is a bold move that I think everyone should embrace.

Deo Deception

Much like a book on anti-gravity, the issue of false advertising is impossible to put down. This week, we’re talking about men’s deodorant commercials! As a female, I’ve always found these commercials to be like insect puns – they really bug me.

This body-spray elevator commercial is wrong on so many levels.

More often than not, men’s deo commercials feature a guy using the product that leads to a lady (or ladies) going head over heels for him because of the deodorant’s scent. Does that happen for real? The obvious answer is no.

I once heard someone say that being aware of something and discovering its purpose may come at two different times. As an example, he mentioned that he’s been aware of deodorants way before he discovered their purpose. As a primary school boy, he just knew that deodorant is something worn by older people but it wasn’t until high school that he discovered what it was for.

And what is it for? History says that before bathing became common, people used heavy colognes to mask body odour and it was only during the late 1800s when deodorant sticks were created by chemists to be commercialised. THERE WE GO. History itself states that mass production of deodorants was done for the sole purpose of commercialism. However, I of course don’t want to disregard the product’s actual purpose which is to prevent and mask body odour. It does the trick, but the question now is when did people become so self-conscious of their smell?

In some cultures, the way you smell is associated to your social class. Smelling nice is one thing, but what about simply being hygienic? Again, when baths and showers weren’t common, people used colognes to mask body odour but it was done outside of the consideration of hygiene. Marketing and advertising become, once again, responsible for making people think there’s a need for this product. (Although, let’s be honest, some people actually do but if they bathed frequently, using soap and more soap, they wouldn’t need it. This is the dichotomy of marketing.)

Can we have more honest advertising? I wouldn’t want to start talking about how sexist those deodorant commercials can be but how sad is it that excellence in advertising lies in the capability of advertisers to bend the truth as much as they can so that their products would sell? Objectifying individuals, casually making fun of issues, or simply advertising a photo that looks nothing like the product you get is, in a lot of ways, disturbing and annoying yet society allows it.

I had a conversation about one of my previous blogs and my friend asked how can an advertising blog be against advertising practices. We’re somewhat like an anti-advertising advertising agency. The norm is sadly dishonest, that’s why we would rather be outspoken about the issues that lie in this industry – call it as it is and even make fun of it, rather than succumb to the practices that deceive people.

On a lighter note, here's another crazy commercial I found for a product that may just work better than a deodorant. Who knows?

Just go with the flow

RED ALERT! We’re talking about period products! Pads, liners, and tampons – not to mention a hot pack, pain killers, and food, lots and lots of food. But we’re specifically going to talk about the ones that us girls use to trap our bloody well… blood! (And mucosal tissue, but let’s not get scientific/visual.)

This menstruation thing is just cramping our style, period. (#pungameisstrong) Ladies, back me up. Most period product ads are the same. A girl or group of girls in white pants or skirts, doing pirouettes, jumping and laughing like it’s all good, doing things they wouldn’t even do if they did not have their period!

The unrealistic advertising of pads and tampons are 100% unnecessary to begin with. First, because it’s totally wrong and counts as false advertising. I know when I’m on my period all I want to do is spend a couple of days in bed with an electric blanket no matter how hot it is outside, fetal position, eating fro-yo, sour squirms, and soup. I most certainly do not want to ride a horse nor do flips at a trampoline park while Aunt Flow is around. Second, I think period products shouldn’t even be advertised to begin with because we’re going to buy them anyway! We don’t have a choice. We will bleed – red blood, NOT some blue liquid. EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.

Does brand matter? Yes and no. Yes, because we tend to become loyal to the brand we’re most comfortable using. I personally am not influenced by ads in this decision because it’s all a matter of experience. And no, brands do not matter especially when your monthly visitor comes without a warning – we’ll most likely use what’s accessible and not risk the apparently high chance of leaking through and staining our white pants.

A great thing to realise though is with the good ol’ Internet, women all over the world have now been responsive in creating videos and articles that reveal how periods actually work. These often point out how period product advertisers do nothing but ovary-act, showing us stuff that we can do if we had their pads or tampons, all the while masking the rather nasty side of things.

It’s obvious where I stand with this. What do you guys think? Shouldn’t period product advertisers just stop and go with the flow?