The Salt Lake Tribune
July 13, 2004
The way to go for a logo
By Glen Warchol
Matt Kammeyer, marketing manager for Salt Lake City's golf courses, wanted to inject some excitement into venerable Nibley Park Golf Course. So he started with the smallest thing.
"The old logo needed updating," Kammeyer says. "The merchandise it was on wasn't moving. We needed something more sophisticated that could be easily reproducible on golf balls, shirts and hats -- something more merchandisable."
Though a logo is simply an identifying symbol -- in this case, used on signs, score cards, shirts, balls and coffee mugs -- Kammeyer knew that if done correctly, it could be something much greater: It would "brand" Nibley Park Golf Course.
In marketing lingo, successfully branding a product or service means making a connection with a consumer on several levels. In addition to being distinctive, a mark should elicit an emotional response, binding customers to the product -- in Nibley's case, 18 holes in the ground on Salt Lake City's southern edge.
The Harley Davidson emblem, for example, that is printed on everything from pen sets to panties, instantly transmits a brand of "motorcycle." But it also evokes tradition, adventure, power and, at some deep level of consciousness, the darker side of manhood. Likewise, to consumers from New York to Nairobi, the Nike swoosh is much, much more than simply a comma on steroids.
But what powerful evocative symbol would consumers connect with Nibley Park Golf Course?
"It had to be a duck," Kammeyer said. "If you play here, they are everywhere. Everyone I talked to said, 'We gotta keep the duck.' "
Kammeyer's second problem was money -- he didn't have much and logo creation can cost thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and take months of soul searching and brainstorming.
Using an informal bidding process, Kammeyer got prices of $900 to $1,700 from agencies for a duck logo.
Enter Logoworks, a Lindon-based online mark service. For less than $400 total, Kammeyer could get creative counseling to produce the logo without leaving his office.
Better yet, he was able to view the first round of ideas in just 72 hours. In the end, the whole process took three weeks, but the delays were all his. "They would set a deadline and usually beat it," he said. "I slowed things down. You want something to sit on your desk a few days before you make a decision."
Morgan Lynch, founder and chief executive of Logoworks, says his company is built from the ground up for one thing: to meet the logo needs of small and medium companies.
"We decided we were going to excel in logos," Lynch says. "We built our whole program around it -- how could we better the logo design process?"
At many firms, only one graphic artist works on a logo, Lynch says. "We believe in the shotgun approach."
When an idea comes in, a squad of Logoworks artists -- two to five freelancers -- tackle it. On the first round they work independently. "We don't believe in brainstorming in the initial phase -- it kills creativity."
In the case of Nibley, three designers produced 10 initial designs based on the information Kammeyer had given them on the course and its customers.
Lynch compares his business to the low-cost airline JetBlue or big-box retailer Costco. Logoworks developed proprietary software to track 500 or more projects a month. Exploiting economics of scale, Logoworks can offer quality service at a low price, he says.
"It's a volume thing, that's our advantage," Lynch says, explaining his three-level, fixed-price model that starts at $265 and offers a money-back guarantee that a client will be satisfied with the initial designs. "Guess what? Sometimes we lose money on a project."
And like JetBlue, Lynch says Logoworks is focused on customer satisfaction. "We are not elitist. Our designers don't get all upset if the customer doesn't like what we believe is the best design for their business. It's their business and their logo."
Ed Brewer, owner of a Sandy firm that makes turkey hunting vests with built-in foam seats, needed a logo that evoked a wild gobbler. "We needed something that was simple, direct and moldable," Brewer says.
"Logoworks shot me 10 ideas and I saw something I liked right away," he says. He asked the artists to combine some elements and after a few revisions, the Beard Buster turkey logo was born.
Preston Wood, creative director for Love Communications in Salt Lake City, says quickie online logos are fine for small startÂup businesses, but when it comes to serious branding campaigns, a company gets what it pays for. It takes serious time and money to research a logo that works on everything from T-shirts to buildings and corporate reports. comma on steroids.
Logos can be purchased online from scores of sites for as little as $45. And for do-it-yourselfers, there are logo software packages.
"If you really want somebody to do marketplace analysis and design something that ties to your company and its core personality, it's going to cost more," he says.
Love charges from $500 for a logo to $20,000 for a branding campaign. "When you pay $500 for a logo, that's all you get," Wood says.
"We try to sit down with a client for three or four hours and really understand their business and how the logo will be used," Wood says. "If you pay real money for a mark, it can truly reflect your company's personality and purpose."
Large agencies have little to fear from the online logo services, Wood says. "There's always somebody who will do it cheaper. Agencies that don't provide real value to their clients beyond a logo will be in trouble."
Kammeyer, who has worked on some extensive branding projects, says the Logoworks process worked well for Nibley.
"If I had $10,000 to develop a logo, I might have gone a different route," Kammeyer says. "My budget for this was very small. I was very happy with what I got for the money."
<< Logoworks in the news
See the Logoworks article at www.startupjournal.com
See the Logoworks article at ries.typepad.com
See the Logoworks article at www.statesman.com
See the Logoworks article at www.benchmark.com
See the Logoworks article at www.usatoday.com
See the Logoworks article at www.constantcontact.com
