Pick n Pay revisited

After clicking through to Brand New this morning I found that they'd covered last month's Pick n Pay rebrand. Christian Palino writes: 'Inspired by ick n ay'. Read through all of the 33 comments for some very insightful opinions by impartial industry experts.

PnP's transformation last month generated huge interest and sparked widespread debate across the design and marketing communities and the blogosphere for many reasons: if not because they are (or were) one of South Africa's most recognizable and best loved brands, then because the job was controversially outsourced to the UK office of a global brand agency while their new brand line aims to focus on us, the customer, with "Inspired by you".

I followed much of what was said by design professionals, bloggers and the general public after the rebrand first made news, and what I found most interesting is how the general public perceived the new logo, after taking into account the poor manner in which it was launched. I say poor because I feel it suffered the same fate as the FIFA 2010 World Cup logo. None of the press releases or media coverage included a clear creative rationale from the design team involved, which excluded the usual drivel that marketers typically spew to the press, such as having undertaken "extensive strategy realignment processes" and "large-scale research and consultation exercises". And these two cases are hardly an exception to the rule.

The written word spreads much quicker on the web, so if you're going to announce something big like a brand relaunch, you'd better do it properly the first time around. Sharing the specifics of the design process and talking openly about the outsourcing of the job was never part of PnP's plan. This missed opportunity left the public to quickly derive their own (typically off-the-wall and non-factual) conclusions of and criticisms on the logo and those responsible.

Comments covered topics ranging from aesthetical: colours similar to Flickr, the typeface resembling that of Facebook, the 'P' block shapes looking like parking signs or toy building blocks - to grammatical: the axing of the apostrophe, the missing tittle on the "i" - to geographical: the Landor team having spent too much time at Tesco's and not enough time in South Africa. It was the Landor issue that fueled most of the public attack on the logo.

What was never mentioned anywhere however, comes via Johan Erasmus' comment on the Brand New post. Johan Engelbrecht (Design Director at Landor) and Andrew Sabatier (Senior Designer) - the two designers who he claims worked on the project, although based in London, are both South African. This doesn't make it any more right that the job wasn't kept local, but it does make you wonder even more about the creative process and reasoning that was followed.

Throughout all of this, traffic to their website probably doubled, which has since received a cosmetic makeover. The old design can be seen here.

It's far from a good effort. I could very easily go on a tirade about the JavaScript-reliant bouncing navigation menu in which only the text is clickable, the "Store search" drop-down menu that haphazardly combines store types and provinces with no visible distinction, the inconsistencies among all of their web sites (Home Shopping, Wine Line, etc)... and that grossly oversized tomato! But I digress.

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