Austrian mayor spunks €40k on virgin-eating dragon The mayor of the Austrian city of Klagenfurt is taking a bit of a shoeing for spunking €40,000 on a "meaningless" municipal rebrand. According to The Local, Maria-Luise Mathiaschitz of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) is under the cosh for hiring Strategy Boutique Smuck, Royer & Die Eins to reimagine the city's …
40K isn't a lot and if rebranding does save money or otherwise pay for itself then it's money well spent, certainly not misuse or abuse of public money.
Of course it's "our" money; it always is. We elect officials to do what they believe is best, and we have to take it somewhat on trust that they will. It is pointless to elect officials to make decisions and then seek to micromanage them.
What would you prefer; their spending 100K on public consultations and holding votes to decide if a rebranding is wanted or not by the public ?
I don't understand how rebranding would save money to be fair... Any stationary etc will need reprinted, vehicles will need reliveried, you'll have all the mastering costs all over again for stationary and the like.
I think they meant they saved money on the rebranding by keeping things in house - rather than swapping the logo over on a few websites to save thousands.
I thought the header image was the new logo at first. THAT would have been worth £40k, the most bad as municipal logo in all of christendom
. . by the cover picture. Very dramatic.
Less impressed by the actual logo - 40k! - I'm in the wrong job. I have no artistic talents that I am aware of but I can swap fonts and change colours with the best of them for, shall we say, 30k (introductory offer because I like your face).
"How does that work then? I'd have thought that the only effective bait for a virgin-eating dragon would be a virgin....."
Many historians have theorised that the legend of using bulls as bait when attempting to slay a virgin-eating Dragon originated in medieval Essex (or the Kingdom of the East Seaxe as it was at the time) - monasterial texts mention the ancient 'hundreds' or districts of Uttlesford and Ongar as being possible locations. It's not that bulls were particularly effective as bait, it's simply that, this being Essex, by the time they managed to find a virgin the Dragon had either flown off or died of old age...
It's done by marketing and design departments to give the impression they're useful somehow. It also flies in the face of good sense. You work hard to establish a brand recognition, so one day people recognize your logo by general shape and color. How far down the road can you spot your favorite restaurant sign? Much farther than you can make out the detail. Then one day you CHANGE IT, losing brand recognition in the process. Rebranding tends to lose customers, not gain them.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Caveat; if your existing brand had a major dose of suckage already, improve it. Otherwise, leave well enough alone.
"Then one day you CHANGE IT, losing brand recognition in the process."
Not been in a McDonalds in *years*. So, the other week I do a very long round trip by car and I'm getting a bit hungry and want something quick. I start looking out for a McD's since they should be easy to spot. Not seeing any. Pull into a supermarket car park, buy a sandwich and then notice a McDs at the other side of the car park and they have rebranded to yellow M on GREEN instead of yellow M on red. Thinking back it's quite probable that I drove past two or more McDs on the trip.
at ye toppe of ye article...
it appears to be an Asian, probably Japanese, dragon. Indeed, it appears to be a soryu, a blue or swimming dragon. Note fish-like tail and dorsal fin. It is not a European, much less a Germanic, dragon. We are Officially Disappointed (tm).
Worse, the very expensive logo... that's not a dragon, either. That's an outline of a deformed lizard. We are Officially Very Disappointed (tm).
As for the rest of the logo... Y'all are kidding, right? They didn't actually pay for that, did they? Whatever happened to Teutonic efficiency? Whatever happened to Teutonic pride? Whatever happened to plain common sense?
Sigh.
On the other hand, I now know that even my less than stellar design skills can be more than adequately rewarded if I do a little drang nach Osten...
@WolfFan
" ye pic at ye toppe of ye article...
it appears to be an Asian, probably Japanese, dragon. Indeed, it appears to be a soryu,"
I don't know how you have the nerve to make that claim.
"Note fish-like tail and dorsal fin."
I do note them, although I cannot see the island, and as any fule kno, the location of the island will identify the dragon.
Soryu - island on the starboard side
Hiryu - island on the port side.
it appears to be an Asian, probably Japanese, dragon
Scandinavian and Germanic dragons were often pictured as snake-like, not just Asian dragons (as popularized by D&D and Shadowrun). This specific case refers to the snake-like lindworm, but Jormungandr and the dragon of Gesta Danorum were snake-like serpentine dragons, too.
This is a great example that could have been run as a popular contest with a 100 Euro prize. Maybe make it 1000 and give out prizes to runner ups too (say 100 and 500 Euros). But then the brother's nephew's sister-in-law's artsy company wouldn't be getting the biz, would it?
This suggestion is the functional equivalent of: "You work with computers, yeah...? Mine's not working. If you can fix it, there's a fiver in it for you!"
Both say "I need what (I think) you do, but I don't value it enough to actually pay you what your time and expertise is worth."
Even the Austrians are not certain what the name Klagenfurt means, or where it comes from.
From Wikipedia, here are some arguments and ideas: "Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters or swamps. In Old Slovene, cviljovec is a place haunted by such a wailing female ghost or cvilya.[5] Thus they assumed that Klagenfurt's name was a translation made by the German settlers of the original Slovene name of the neighbouring wetland. However, the earliest Slovene mention of Klagenfurt in the form of "v Zelouzi" ('in Celovec', the Slovene name for Klagenfurt) dating from 1615[6] is 400 years more recent and thus could be a translation from German. The latest interpretation, on the other hand, is that the Old Slovene cviljovec itself goes back to an Italic l'aquiliu meaning a place at or in the water, which would make the wailing-hag theory obsolete.[7]
Scholars had at various times attempted to explain the city's peculiar name: In the 14th century, the abbot and historiographer John of Viktring translated Klagenfurt's name in his Liber certarum historiarum as Queremoniae Vadus, i.e. "ford of complaint", Hieronymus Megiser, Master of the university college of the Carinthian Estates in Klagenfurt and editor of the earliest printed history of the duchy in 1612, believed to have found the origin of the name in a "ford across the River Glan",[8] which, however, is impossible for linguistic reasons. The common people also sought an explanation: A baker's apprentice was accused of theft and executed, but when a few days afterwards the alleged theft turned out to be a mistake and the lad was proved to be totally innocent, the citizens' "lament (= 'Klagen') went forth and forth". This story was reported by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II.[9]"
Sorry if that's too much information. You may now continue the main purpose of theregister, which is
"who can make the snarkiest remarks", almost to the point of hilarious.
Hobart (Tasmania) Mayor Sue Hickey is obsessed with changing the Council logo. The odds are 100:1 that the Hobart City Council will shortly be amalgamating with adjacent Glenorchy City Council, thus requiring a logo change.
On second thoughts Sue Hickey's business, Slick Promotions, sells tat with yourcorporatelogohere.
This stupidity rang a bell with me, so I looked it up.
http://www.businesszone.co.uk/branding-disasters-the-rebranding-of-british-airways
It doesn't mention (though I'm sure it can be found easily enough - it's too late and I'm off to bed) that the amount these imbeciles spent on paint was about the same as the amount that the unions wanted as a wage increase. Difficult decision time - keep my business running, or spaff the money on paint? Hmmm...
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