back to article Capgemini: We love our 'flexible, flowing' spade

Throwing caution to the wind, the IT outsourcing and services giant Capgemini is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a daring visit to the Strategy Boutique. The Gallic operation's wordmark is now expressed in a cursive script, and controversially features a radically redrawn corporate spade. "We love our spade," gushes …

  1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

    Can't be bothered making the obvious dick joke

    It's fine. The old one is a bit cheesy like something you'd find in ab 80s porn mag but I can't see the problem with its replacement.

    1. TitterYeNot
      Coat

      Re: Can't be bothered making the obvious dick joke

      "but I can't see the problem with its replacement."

      Well it's misspelt for a start, they've missed the 'r' out...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Can't be bothered making the obvious dick joke

        Wow did you think that up all by yourself? Sad

        1. TitterYeNot

          Re: Can't be bothered making the obvious dick joke

          "Wow did you think that up all by yourself? Sad"

          Wow, El Reg is honoured, looks like we've had a visit from a certain Mr. Trump...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Can't be bothered making the obvious dick joke

            It's still no match for the Office of Government Commerce

    2. wayne 8

      Re: Floppy spade moves no earth.

      A bit too fluid where precision counts.

  2. LewisRage

    "We’ve also introduced a new handcrafted wordmark of our name, humanizing our brand."

    What a load of utter fucking wank. I never have and never will be able to believe that people can spout this drivel un-ironically and yet there doesn't seem to be the slightest hint of sstire here.

    1. HieronymusBloggs

      "I never have and never will be able to believe that people can spout this drivel un-ironically"

      What I find more difficult to believe is that other people pay them to say it.

      1. HieronymusBloggs

        "What I find more difficult to believe is that other people pay them to say it."

        To the downvoter: are you a marketing person?

    2. Pen-y-gors

      B Ark

      Can we persuade that nice Mr Musk to designate his first experimental-and-doomed-to-fail BFS launch as the B Ark and offer places to these branding jokers?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I preferred the original's rationale. When Serge Kampf founded Capgemini he used the Spade 'cos he liked the shape and made it blue because he reckoned he could nick some of IBM's market presence by being blue-by-proxy, so to speak.

    1. LewisRage

      Functional and honest, literally the opposite of todays announcement.

    2. Potemkine! Silver badge

      And the message was crystal-clear: "you'll get it deeply in the ace."

    3. John L Ward

      The spade was chosen because Serge enjoyed playing bridge, hence the reason why the marketing rubbish goes on about it being the "highest value suit in a deck of playing cards" generally true for Bridge and not much else.

  4. Potemkine! Silver badge

    'Humanizing'? PR BS!

    This kind of companies can accurately be described as 'meat renters', they provide kilograms of engineers. The term 'human resource' describes quite well how underlings are considered at CapGemini.

    Exploitation is their business model and it works for 50 years.

  5. Lysenko

    Looks like they really wanted to go with Comic Sans...

    ... but didn't quite have the cojones, so they settled for Comic Cursive.

    Another golden opportunity to use Papyrus missed <sigh>.

  6. Chris Miller

    I can see there may be some point to marketing bullcrap if you produce consumer goods, such as fish fingers or cars. But has anyone ever selected an IT service provider because they had a pretty logo?

    IBM have their faults, but at least they kept the same logo for decades at a time.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is the company that renamed a building in Telford as @Phoenix, where the @ is an integral part of the building's name, so they're probably serious about the significance of the colours and redesigned spade emblem.

    1. nnnndave

      The building everyone continues to call Matheson anyway?

  8. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    That spade is sharp ?

    In what universe ? To me it looks like a fat slob overflowing the couch. The Cheetos are hidden underneath.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That spade is sharp ?

      It is showing a large teardrop falling onto the spade, as their clients cry over the wasted money and talent on this rebranding exercise.

      Although you're right, it *could* just be Mr Greedy standing in front of it.

      1. lglethal Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: That spade is sharp ?

        It's a blue Lady with a large dark afro right? Or maybe a weirdly shaped mushroom?

        Now a spade is supposed to be a digging tool, and this is a floppy spade, which is by defintion useless. Does that mean the company is being honest by associating themselves withbeing useless and not being fit for function? Honesty in Marketing? I'm shocked i tell you, Shocked!

  9. hplasm
    Facepalm

    This isn't just a spade...

    It's a PR shit-shifting spade!

    1. Doogie Howser MD

      Re: This isn't just a spade...

      Can't we just call a spade a spade anymore?

      1. smudge

        Re: This isn't just a spade...

        Can't we just call a spade a spade anymore?

        If you want. I'd call it a f__king shovel.

      2. Stoneshop
        Headmaster

        Re: This isn't just a spade...

        Can't we just call a spade a spade anymore?

        Definitely not. It's a manually-operated pedal-force-augmented composite digging soil reshaping and transfer implement.

        1. Wyrdness

          Re: This isn't just a spade...

          Surely it should be a "soil reshaping and transfer *solution*."

  10. RyszrdG

    Bah Humbug

    Could have saved themselves a fortune by using Comic Sans and an emoji.

  11. Admiral Grace Hopper

    Can I have an "E" please Bob?

    I was working for EDS when they changed from a square surround for the "E" to a round one, because "e" was then the magic letter and making it round would be the panacea for all the company's woes. It was possibly the worst result of dropping a dodgy E that I ever saw.

  12. Richard Boyce

    Douglas Adams

    Let's put these talented people to work designing the interior of the B-Ark. Obviously, this vital work will need to be done from the inside...

    1. wayne 8

      Re: Douglas Adams

      Then Ark-B is locked from the outside and never has to be launched. Brilliant!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Traditionally the highest value suit in a deck of playing cards...

    If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man, You win some, lose some, it's all the same to me.

    The pleasure is to play, makes no difference what you say, I don't share your greed, the only card I need is...

    Some kind of limp, flaccid blue corporate logo,

    Some kind of limp, flaccid blue corporate logo.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Traditionally the highest value suit in a deck of playing cards...

      Hark! What is that I hear? A chainsaw growl from across the Styx: "I fuckin' hate that song. Wish I'd never fuckin' written it."

  14. wayne 8

    Bought out by CapGeminiAmerica back in the day.

    Went from a private contracting company that respected the talent to being a resource of a faceless corporation.

    We had 20 days off every year. Ours to use as we wish while working with the client with whom we had a relationship.

    CGA chops it to 15 and has an onsite resource, who collected $0.10/hour for each resource on site, would check if we were at our desks when HE expected us to be. The Client knew where I was every Tuesday afternoon at 15:15, heading home to take an evening shift at the local volunteer ambulance corps.

  15. montymole1

    what a load of old Bo**x... there goes another years pay and bonus...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OK, I'm going rogue here..

    I actually like the new logo. Not that I agree with the associated marketing waffle because I hate that kind of bullshit, but visually it looks more fluid and modern.

    The old logo was rather staid (yes, old) with that upright serif font. I'm not a designer or graphics expert but I would place that somewhere in the 90s.

    That said, the logo does not maketh the company. I have had good experienced with Cap Gemini engineers, admittedly ages ago, but their senior management was intolerable. I doubt the new shiny logo will make much of a difference there (would be cool if it did, actually :) ).

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dilbert. There's always a Dilbert

    Whenever some company or other rebrands, it always makes me think of Dilbert's response to Lucent Technologies adoption of a red ring as their brand mark.

    When I listened to the internal webcast announcing this (yes, I'm one of their rented meat sacks, hence the ac), I have to say that my 'brand bullshit meter' blew its safety valve pretty early on.

    The Ace of Spades logo was really simple to explain: it's the best card in the pack meaning we are the best consultants in the pack. The client nods, smiles, calls you a tosser silently in his head and you quickly move on to real business. Now, I have to somehow explain that something that looks like a large, soggy blanket being draped over a post somehow has something to do with more energy.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone else...

    ...to whom that new spade rather signifies "unbalanced"? Hmm...

    And AFAIK the spades are the highest suite only in some card games but not others...

  19. FuzzyTheBear

    And they paid for this ?

    That sounds like the load of crap teenagers come up with drunk at 4 am with a morning deadline.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And they paid for this ?

      Not yet. But they will in due course.

      Probably some "creative" agency has walked away with half a million quid for the deflated spade. But for a large company, the real costs are changing all the signs, logos, employee uniforms, reworking the Powerpoint style, the ad campaign to broadcast to the world the vital news of the new melted logo, the internal propaganda videos and materials etc. Altogether the costs of changing a dull blue logo to a dull blue logo will easily reach several million quid.

  20. Denarius

    isnt Spade the suite indicating death

    in some card activities ? But then, a shovel is what is used when throwing excreta around. Fans are so yesterday.

  21. BoldMan

    Rearrange the following words into a well known phrase or saying that perfectly describes this activity

    wank Load old of

  22. James Fox

    Hmmm...

    With the new logo my eye seems to be drawn right to left (from the spade to the lettering) and with the letters all in one colour I seem to only get as far as 'mini'.

    Probably just me.

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