Re-Branding Nickelodeon

Recently London based Mainframe has just launched at least in their own country (that would be England Jeff) some motion pieces that re-branded the kid’s cable channel Nickelodeon. These spots are exciting, colorful and most of all fun to watch kid or not. The biggest risk though that I felt when first viewing them was the lack of the Nickelodeon characters (like flagship Sponge Bob Squarepants) being shown. Yes those characters are in the spots in some way, shape or form but is it too risky to re-brand when the things said client is known for is not even being shown to the target audience?

And after a few more views and reading/researching the spots work flow and concepts I came to realize that yes it is OK and worth the risk in this case. After all when you consider the target audience are children… the feel, vibe and animations alone help “sell”  the re-branding perfectly. The flagship characters become secondary yet still retain their importance. This made me think of another re-brand I have heard about and seen here and there… actually seeing two billboards today for the re-brand. That product re-brand was Pepsi but these boards don’t even have the name Pepsi just the new take on the iconic swirl sitting within quippy headlines. I think with Pepsi though the re-branding while cool looking misses the mark. The reason I feel this is cause unlike Nickelodeon there is nothing on these boards I saw that said the brand name. Regardless of how cool the new mark is and how many years the company has been around I still think unless it was a teaser campaign Pepsi was conducting (which it isn’t) you still need the name somewheret. Another (kind of) branding case that really confused me was the recent Girl Scout cookie boards: Want Samoas? I had no idea what they were talking about really. I know these treats as “Caramel deLites” and without a better angled picture of that cookie going by at 30-60 mph “Samoa”

just doesn’t cut it for me. 

So why does Nickelodeon make the cut and these two other examples didn’t for me? I guess the first gut reaction is the partial bias I have for Motion Design but the designer in me just is the old fashioned I guess kind of guy who like and enjoys seeing the name somewhere on there. I was taught in college to remind the audience who you are, and I am use to seeing that kind of design logic too. Tell me what you think of these spots for Nickelodeon and what you may or may not agree with on my re-branding thoughts. I also will put up a link to an interview with the guys from Mainframe, here you go.

Enjoy! Thanks for reading… sorry I have been late on posts things are a bit confusing right now. 

MH