New, indeed
I’ll start by reiterating that this week we’re continuing our ongoing album from the Greenville Hwy 82 McDonald's, so this is NOT a teaser for a new photoset. Rather, I just wanted to discuss some Kroger stuff with y’all.
I was taking a picture of one of Kroger’s “we have newly redesigned packaging for xyz product, you should check it out!” signs – something I’ve been doing off and on for five years now when I see such signs, and will eventually share with y’all as one giant project – when this caught my eye. While the products themselves continue to use the now-former Kroger logo, the top left corner of the advertisement, very oddly, features the new Kroger wordmark, but within the old blue oval shape.
This is not the intended use of this wordmark. As far as I was aware, when the new logo was introduced last fall, the idea was that it is now meant to stand alone, without the need for the oval, no matter how familiar and intertwined with the brand that shape has become over the years. Moreover, multiple sources mention that the new wordmark is a standalone piece: “But the oval-shaped shield has been removed,” “Gone is the oval that formerly backed the company name,” “The new mark...loses the red-outlined oval that has accompanied the logo for decades.” And yet, here we are.
My initial confusion thus led me to wonder whether this particular advertisement is something which originated at a non-corporate level, i.e. not Cincinnati but perhaps from the Delta Division, and whoever put it together simply did not know about, or blatantly ignored, the branding guidelines that surely came with the new logo from the ad agency that created it. Or maybe it did come from HQ after all, and it’s just Cincinnati that’s saying “f*ck it” and ignoring the branding guidelines. Either one seems plausible; my thinking was that whoever whipped up this ad simply wanted to update the old logo shape with the new wordmark, and voila, we have a one-off piece of unofficial branding that should never have existed. (1/3)
(c) 2020 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)
New, indeed
I’ll start by reiterating that this week we’re continuing our ongoing album from the Greenville Hwy 82 McDonald's, so this is NOT a teaser for a new photoset. Rather, I just wanted to discuss some Kroger stuff with y’all.
I was taking a picture of one of Kroger’s “we have newly redesigned packaging for xyz product, you should check it out!” signs – something I’ve been doing off and on for five years now when I see such signs, and will eventually share with y’all as one giant project – when this caught my eye. While the products themselves continue to use the now-former Kroger logo, the top left corner of the advertisement, very oddly, features the new Kroger wordmark, but within the old blue oval shape.
This is not the intended use of this wordmark. As far as I was aware, when the new logo was introduced last fall, the idea was that it is now meant to stand alone, without the need for the oval, no matter how familiar and intertwined with the brand that shape has become over the years. Moreover, multiple sources mention that the new wordmark is a standalone piece: “But the oval-shaped shield has been removed,” “Gone is the oval that formerly backed the company name,” “The new mark...loses the red-outlined oval that has accompanied the logo for decades.” And yet, here we are.
My initial confusion thus led me to wonder whether this particular advertisement is something which originated at a non-corporate level, i.e. not Cincinnati but perhaps from the Delta Division, and whoever put it together simply did not know about, or blatantly ignored, the branding guidelines that surely came with the new logo from the ad agency that created it. Or maybe it did come from HQ after all, and it’s just Cincinnati that’s saying “f*ck it” and ignoring the branding guidelines. Either one seems plausible; my thinking was that whoever whipped up this ad simply wanted to update the old logo shape with the new wordmark, and voila, we have a one-off piece of unofficial branding that should never have existed. (1/3)
(c) 2020 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)