Mister Wong logo contest: finals

The finalists of the Mister Wong logo contest have been unveiled:

http://blog.mister-wong.com/presenting-the-top12-from-the-user-voting-of-the-logo-contest/2007/10/25/

When arrogance kills your marketing skills

I've been reading and educating myself about online marketing for quite a while now. There's some really smart people out there with creative marketing ideas for the new Web (like Stuart Henshall).

And there's other people too. Like Andy Beal. Despite the indisputable fact that he is a successful blogger, his viral tricks to enhance his site ranking can be degrading to anyone who participates.

The Marketing Pilgrim blog recently launched a contest, awarding $500 to the one guy who can suck his ass the most by explaining through a post why Andy Beale's blog is the sh**. This is degrading for many reasons:

1. Uncompromising award.
First $500 is nada. I don't make millions, but generating a buzz with an award that don't even pay the rent is lame.

2. Compromising for participants' self-esteem.
Second, the people interested by the award are probably low-traffic bloggers (like me), or/and low-income bloggers too (I get by). That is a severe case of exploitation of the over-represented low-traffic bloggership desperately seeking for more blogging power.

3. A negatively correlated buzz effect.
The best is that bloggers' main motivation is an award that they have 00.01% chance of getting. The mere fact of participating reduces their chances to win since they lead other bloggers in the game, therefore reducing everybody's chances.

The Marketing Pilgrim blog is playing blogonomics to get the needy blogosphere to sing him praises about his own success. If some people can use the Web as the mirror for their own narcissism, this means new technologies haven't changed humanity a bit.

Note: Should I ask for the $500 for this post?

Mister Wong's logo contest: 2.0 design challenge

Mister Wong's Logo Contest: 2.0 Design Challenge

$6,000, that's the bar raised by the Mister Wong's execs team to award the winner who will submit the best new logo for their company. That's motivating enough to spend a few hours drawing who we think Mister Wong is.

Why is Mashable defining this event as a twist? Let's take it back a few weeks ago. On July 2nd 2007, Mister Wong launches its social bookmarking service in the United States. When the news hit Mashable, an aversion of negative feedbacks swamped the comments box. Groups of American Internauts interpreted the logo as a racist offense, mostly since Mister Wong is a German company, not a Chinese one.


At first fuzzled by this type of response, Kai Tietjen, Ceo of Mister Wong, buried the logo in the basement and expressed his sincere apologies. The twist Mashable talked about? Instead of shying away and let time erase the memories, Kai Tietjen stepped in the spotlights and launched an international online contest, with dollar bills for the winner.

The winner will be rewarded upon its ability to provide the best logo possible for the Mister Wong social bookmarking service. And here is the first trick for graphic designers to overcome: Find a logo that suits the Wong identity, all-the-while avoiding to use racist stereotypes.


Now this is tricky since the line between acceptable racist stereotypes and unacceptable ones is very thin (and subject to changes). Especially since the company is German: If there's one crowd we don't like to see juggling with race stereotypes, it surely is the Germans! Before being a good graphic designer, the winner will have to be a smart cookie.

The business behind social bookmarking
On another level, social bookmarking Websites are exploding in the Web 2.0 wave. The growth even surprised Jay Adelson, who never thought before launching Digg that the phenomenon would turn this big.


Robert Scoble recently explained why he thought that socially-driven technology was going to beat more traditional ones (Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years). Social bookmarking appears to be one of the most powerful 2.0 tools.

In a few years, Mister Wong's execs will have their hands on some pretty heavy business deals (except if the new logo fails them again). The graphic identity has to fit this context too.


The MW Double 0
Submitted logo
Title: MW double 0
Description: The M and the W form a cool alien-like face with a simple 3-D shape.
The hat is the crown of the "Master Of Bookmarks" (+ kinda looks like ancient times chinese hats).
The shape actually forms two zeros attached to each other (00), 2.0.
The design is simple and does not imply more than 5 colors.
Cool 2.0 logo (actually the only one with 2 0s), respects the company's identity, unique, fun.

Comment my work here.