Sixth Sense Bonus

The shortest blog I ever penned was actually too long. It was about the horrendous new (new to my region anyway) Best Western logo. I mean really and truly awfully poor and shitty. It sucks so bad that I couldn’t get myself to merely show the logo and just write ‘Really?’ which would have been enough.

I have no background on the logo. I just know that I started noticing it about a month ago and was shocked. And each time since then, I am equally as shocked. 

I suspect that Best Western hired some sort of design or marketing firm to develop a new corporate identity for them. Presumably, that firm listened to the client discuss their brand position, did some research and developed a bunch of initial ideas in rough format. The client reacted to those and the designers came back with a half-dozen marks that reflected the desire of the client. Then, at some point in time, multiple people got involved. One person liked this font, one person liked that. The color was tweaked, along with the supporting graphic/shape/icon, over and over and over. Then some more.  Eventually the agency lost control. Then the main client contact lost control. And there was some compromise (OK, a ton of compromise). And the agency gave up. And they got this. 

And this.

The plus stands for extra horrible, by the way.

But, there’s a bigger point here than pointing out the obviously disastrous BW logo (I just can’t stop, can I?) Let the people that you hired for marketing do their job. If they don’t do it well, fire them. 

Your marketing director needs to lead and ‘direct.’ That’s why they’re called a ‘director.’ They don’t have to be an expert in every marketing discipline. In fact, they aren’t. They can’t be — that person doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. But, they can hire experts either internally or externally. Their job is to coordinate the activities of these experts in order to meet their marketing objectives. They should assume and should be given the ultimate responsibility for the marketing efforts. If they can’t be trusted to do so, they shouldn’t have been put in that position. And neither should their team. So, find the right person for the job and let them do their job. Or else, you’ll end up with a crappy hotel logo BTW.