According to reports in The Sunday Times, none of the four shortlisted agencies had to submit examples of their proposed Olympic logos for the 13-week competition, which was conducted by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games.
Locog has defended its decision not to ask any of the agencies to submit examples of designs for the 2012 Olympics, stating it would have been too expensive for each of the agencies to submit a rough design at the brief stage. However, this is a common approach in many pitches.
Instead, four agencies -- Interbrand, Identica, Wolff Olins and Lambie Nairn -- were asked to submit their approach to creating a symbol for the games, which Locog said must produce a brand "like never before" in Olympic history, that would "inspire the youth of the world".
Chris Townsend, commercial director of Locog, said: "We ran this process as any professional blue-chip company would, which means meeting the best agencies and selecting a small number to formally pitch. Developing creative work is very costly for agencies and clients."
However, the decision to appoint Wolff Olins without seeing creative work has been heavily criticised by the design community and MPs, who have questioned the amount of money spent on the design and the process in which it was selected.
The chosen design was endorsed by: Locog chairman Lord Sebastian Coe; culture secretary Tessa Jowell; Lord Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association.
Despite the widespread criticism of the London 2012 Olympic logo, Locog and Wolff Olins are to press ahead with the branding plans for the design by finding ways to incorporate the logo into merchandise, including clothing, household furnishings and promotional materials.
Brian Boylan, the chairman of Wolff Olins, has close ties with Tessa Jowell, who appointed him commissioner of the government's Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
Comments
Can we have some informed comments on whether it is normal/reasonable to adk for and get "rough" ideas for a job of this size prior to awarding the contract. Propeller is in PR, not design, so it's less acute for us, but still the same in principal when it comes to investing time upfront ina pitch.
It's the same old stories for us agencies: either pitch on your track record and risk losing out to an agency that has produced initial creative ideas ( and so appears "keener")or do the work up front on spec and hope to win. if you don't it's a helluva lot of time and money up the swanny. Steer the middle course with a "few rough ideas" and you run the risk of producing something less thought out and pleasing no one.
"for a job of this size" - I don't think this job is any different than any other branding work. A logo is a logo, and a pitch is a pitch. It shouldn't matter...
Martin, it's true many agencies are simply in a no-win situation here. I think what sets apart the Wolff Olins design from other briefs is its extraordinary nature - extremely high profile and, as it turns out, extremely off target.
Even one of the judges (Ken Livingstone) who chose it has publicly criticised it. A lot of time will pass between now and the games, so maybe opinions will change, but the Wolff Olins' example highlights a major issue within the design community about the pitch process for creatives which perhaps should have been addressed a long time ago.
I am a photographers agent and this is like a photographer being awarded a commission without the client even seeing a portfolio - it is ridiculous. And this is the first time I ahve ever noted a client showing any concern for how much it costs those pitching!! And the logo is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
I think that Brand Republic should start up a campaign against the Olympic committee wasting the huge amounts of our money its going to over the next 5 years on bad branding for stupid budgets and no doubt a million other dreadful marketing activity they'll be responsible for... they need to have some level of accountability surely? If we as an industry don't point this out to the rest of the country then no one will ever know how these things SHOULD be done! I'd do it myself but I'm too lazy...
I am really gob smacked and the response to this story. Wolff Olins are brand strategists - they don't just scribble a 'logo' out the sky - they create brands. On a site like Brand Republic surely there should be a teensy bit more comprehension on what goes into creating a brand, and rolling it out through all the various applications that will happen during an event like the Olympics. Personally I don't like the logo but thats just aethetics. I am pretty sure there is a reason why the logo looks like it does and I just wish Wolff Olins had set out the brief so we could all 'get it'. When any branding specialist is involved in a pitch - I would be very surprised if they showed any creative work - after all - the job they are pitching for involves an enourmous amount of consultation - strategy - weeks and weeks of man hours before the creative brief even gets near the creative team. The £400K cost never bothered me as an account manager I have a pretty good idea where the money was spent and probably about a third of that went on consultation so the idea of evening considering creative ideas before that process has taken place is bizarre!
As a final thought - perhaps the 2012 logo will grow on us. I saw an old style mini this morning, followed by the new style one and remembered how I had thought the new mini was a total abomination when it was first launched. Now I think they are the cutest things. Hopefully the 2012 logo will do the same.
I have to say it seems a very sensible approach to a pitch. All 4 agencies have track records that speak for themselves. To ask all 4 to fully design the logo/ID and then only pay one would reflect the nasty advertising model everyone in the industry wants to get away from.
I can't make my mind up about the actual design. For me it doesn't immediately say 'London' or 'Olympics', and I'm alwayd skeptical when logos are acccompanied by paragraphs of guff to justify the design - a logo should speak for itself; that's its job.
However, this could have been the most pedestrian and 'corporate' of briefs but they have definitely not gone for the safe option. Someone's got balls, that's for sure, and I can't help but admire them for that.
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that.
The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free.
All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business. Good agencies in particular, will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes.
I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just common sense.
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that.
The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free.
All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business. Good agencies in particular, will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes.
I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just common sense.
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that.
The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free.
All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business. Good agencies in particular, will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes.
I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just common sense.
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that.
The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free.
All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business! Good agencies in particular will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes.
I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just basic professionalism.
What a great logo for London - brash, colourful, unafraid, expensive, unmissable, controversial, retro (design people says it's "so 80s"), zagging where others zig. It's a 'love to hate it' logo. It's a Carnaby Street of a logo, a Mini Cooper of a logo, a 'Lloyds of London' and a 'Gherkin' of a logo, it's a building a modern art museum out of a power station logo, 21st century giant ferris wheel on the South Bank logo, a decades-long 'Free Nelson Mandela' demo outside South Africa House logo, a Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren and 'Never mind the bollocks' logo. A 'We got the Olympics and Paris didn't' attitude logo. Wonderful. We love it. Keep talking about it and watch it grow.
Some might say it's not 'never mind the bollocks' it's just 'bollocks'...
We should be supporting any organisation that will happily appoint Wolf Ollins on the strength of previous work. We waste MILLIONS pandering to needles pitches. And i'm delighted that a logo of this astonishing audacity could be picked by the olympic comittee. It's brilliant.
Hmmm. I can't believe i'm agreeing with someone who uses the phrase 'Zagging where others zig', but I think Simon Chapman is right. It provokes the 'How dare they!' response from all the right people. A very British audacity. And the way 'london' and the olympic rings appear as this kind of afterthought is deliciously naughty. The fact that this got made sends out all the right messages about Britain and our attitude to hosting the Olympics. I think it's brilliant.
Re the last few comments - I'm almost there when I hear how it's brash, ballsy, groundbreaking etc. But then I only need to glance to the top of the page and look at it again and I think no, no, no. The weight of the words being used to describe it and what it is just don't match at all.
As if you can engineer a response so fervent...
The committee bought the designs. Whether they bought them before they asked WO to do them or after, matter's not one jot, really. WO are a respected company with an excellent track record and it's easy to understand why seb's lot went for them. It must have looked like a really safe option and who knows, it may even turn out to have been a good decision (is that a deafening chorus of "yeah, righs" I hear?) The sad thing as far as I can see, is that the logo is everything it was briefed not to be... It's not edgy (except in the sense that there are lots of straight bits), it's not modern, it's not brash (unless it was meant to look like Lisa Simpson engaged in a little fellatio) and it has nothing whatsoever to do with London or the Olympics.
Now if instead of taking what looked like the safe option, seb and crew had taken a risk and done something genuinely edgy and london focused like giving the job to Banksy (definitley without a pitch or any conditions), perhaps we'd all be startled, amused, shocked etc in a far more intersting way.
I look at it again too, and i want to go 'no, no, no'. I know it breaks (good) design rules. It's clunky. it's dangerously close to being all 'down wid da kids' and horrible. The colours are kinda yuk. And it doesn't seem to have any visual references to London or the Olympics. It is seriously wierd. Yet...it feels iconic. Already. Maybe someone has engineered the fervent response - but if so then they've done a good job.
Why should it be a surprise that Wolff Olins were appointed without showing design ideas?
Following on from Martin & Katrina, as professionals, do we not understand what brand strategy is? The last thing to be produced should be the logo itself - let's get the brand values sorted, the brand story right, the substance of how experiencing the brand, seeing and taking part in the games etc, it's legacy etc. And let's have all the stakeholders singing the same tune. That's what Wolff Olins got £400k for (well, a bit of it would have been on the 40,00 brand "elements"), not the logo.
Which is a good job - having (in my humble opinion) got more or less everything else in the brand strategy about right, I wouldn't pay £1.50 for the logo. I hope to be proved wrong about that over the next 5 years...
Alcock you have no taste anyway.
Comments
Propeller Mobile - 11/06/2007
Can we have some informed comments on whether it is normal/reasonable to adk for and get "rough" ideas for a job of this size prior to awarding the contract. Propeller is in PR, not design, so it's less acute for us, but still the same in principal when it comes to investing time upfront ina pitch. It's the same old stories for us agencies: either pitch on your track record and risk losing out to an agency that has produced initial creative ideas ( and so appears "keener")or do the work up front on spec and hope to win. if you don't it's a helluva lot of time and money up the swanny. Steer the middle course with a "few rough ideas" and you run the risk of producing something less thought out and pleasing no one.
borislav kandov - 11/06/2007
"for a job of this size" - I don't think this job is any different than any other branding work. A logo is a logo, and a pitch is a pitch. It shouldn't matter...
Alex Donohue - 11/06/2007
Martin, it's true many agencies are simply in a no-win situation here. I think what sets apart the Wolff Olins design from other briefs is its extraordinary nature - extremely high profile and, as it turns out, extremely off target. Even one of the judges (Ken Livingstone) who chose it has publicly criticised it. A lot of time will pass between now and the games, so maybe opinions will change, but the Wolff Olins' example highlights a major issue within the design community about the pitch process for creatives which perhaps should have been addressed a long time ago.
ANGELA WOODS - 11/06/2007
I am a photographers agent and this is like a photographer being awarded a commission without the client even seeing a portfolio - it is ridiculous. And this is the first time I ahve ever noted a client showing any concern for how much it costs those pitching!! And the logo is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
Justine Wyness - 11/06/2007
I think that Brand Republic should start up a campaign against the Olympic committee wasting the huge amounts of our money its going to over the next 5 years on bad branding for stupid budgets and no doubt a million other dreadful marketing activity they'll be responsible for... they need to have some level of accountability surely? If we as an industry don't point this out to the rest of the country then no one will ever know how these things SHOULD be done! I'd do it myself but I'm too lazy...
Katrina Doran - 11/06/2007
I am really gob smacked and the response to this story. Wolff Olins are brand strategists - they don't just scribble a 'logo' out the sky - they create brands. On a site like Brand Republic surely there should be a teensy bit more comprehension on what goes into creating a brand, and rolling it out through all the various applications that will happen during an event like the Olympics. Personally I don't like the logo but thats just aethetics. I am pretty sure there is a reason why the logo looks like it does and I just wish Wolff Olins had set out the brief so we could all 'get it'. When any branding specialist is involved in a pitch - I would be very surprised if they showed any creative work - after all - the job they are pitching for involves an enourmous amount of consultation - strategy - weeks and weeks of man hours before the creative brief even gets near the creative team. The £400K cost never bothered me as an account manager I have a pretty good idea where the money was spent and probably about a third of that went on consultation so the idea of evening considering creative ideas before that process has taken place is bizarre! As a final thought - perhaps the 2012 logo will grow on us. I saw an old style mini this morning, followed by the new style one and remembered how I had thought the new mini was a total abomination when it was first launched. Now I think they are the cutest things. Hopefully the 2012 logo will do the same.
Jonny Watson - 11/06/2007
I have to say it seems a very sensible approach to a pitch. All 4 agencies have track records that speak for themselves. To ask all 4 to fully design the logo/ID and then only pay one would reflect the nasty advertising model everyone in the industry wants to get away from. I can't make my mind up about the actual design. For me it doesn't immediately say 'London' or 'Olympics', and I'm alwayd skeptical when logos are acccompanied by paragraphs of guff to justify the design - a logo should speak for itself; that's its job. However, this could have been the most pedestrian and 'corporate' of briefs but they have definitely not gone for the safe option. Someone's got balls, that's for sure, and I can't help but admire them for that.
Paul Jowett - 12/06/2007
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that. The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free. All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business. Good agencies in particular, will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes. I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just common sense.
Paul Jowett - 12/06/2007
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that. The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free. All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business. Good agencies in particular, will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes. I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just common sense.
Paul Jowett - 12/06/2007
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that. The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free. All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business. Good agencies in particular, will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes. I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just common sense.
Paul Jowett - 12/06/2007
What a critical mistake made by Locog. Many blue chip companies do indeed appoint agencies without a formal pitch process, but this is a huge mistake. The appointment of an agency effectively determines the brand look and feel, so you have to get it right. It's as simple as that. The reality is that Locog have missed a massive opportunity, as all these agencies and many more would have submitted concepts for free. All agencies, will generally pitch for free to win new business and what a piece of new business! Good agencies in particular will relish pitching, as chances are they will win. It's also a chance to show their thinking and justify their (large) fees. Instead, we have a logo that the various representatives have to defend but ultimately the public dislikes. I would question the Locog marketing people in charge of this process. It's clear that they lack either the experience to recognise this or just basic professionalism.
Simon Chapman - 12/06/2007
What a great logo for London - brash, colourful, unafraid, expensive, unmissable, controversial, retro (design people says it's "so 80s"), zagging where others zig. It's a 'love to hate it' logo. It's a Carnaby Street of a logo, a Mini Cooper of a logo, a 'Lloyds of London' and a 'Gherkin' of a logo, it's a building a modern art museum out of a power station logo, 21st century giant ferris wheel on the South Bank logo, a decades-long 'Free Nelson Mandela' demo outside South Africa House logo, a Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren and 'Never mind the bollocks' logo. A 'We got the Olympics and Paris didn't' attitude logo. Wonderful. We love it. Keep talking about it and watch it grow.
Ben Alcock - 12/06/2007
Some might say it's not 'never mind the bollocks' it's just 'bollocks'...
Mike Middleton - 12/06/2007
We should be supporting any organisation that will happily appoint Wolf Ollins on the strength of previous work. We waste MILLIONS pandering to needles pitches. And i'm delighted that a logo of this astonishing audacity could be picked by the olympic comittee. It's brilliant.
Stefan Butterfield - 13/06/2007
Hmmm. I can't believe i'm agreeing with someone who uses the phrase 'Zagging where others zig', but I think Simon Chapman is right. It provokes the 'How dare they!' response from all the right people. A very British audacity. And the way 'london' and the olympic rings appear as this kind of afterthought is deliciously naughty. The fact that this got made sends out all the right messages about Britain and our attitude to hosting the Olympics. I think it's brilliant.
Alex Donohue - 13/06/2007
Re the last few comments - I'm almost there when I hear how it's brash, ballsy, groundbreaking etc. But then I only need to glance to the top of the page and look at it again and I think no, no, no. The weight of the words being used to describe it and what it is just don't match at all. As if you can engineer a response so fervent...
alan curson - 13/06/2007
The committee bought the designs. Whether they bought them before they asked WO to do them or after, matter's not one jot, really. WO are a respected company with an excellent track record and it's easy to understand why seb's lot went for them. It must have looked like a really safe option and who knows, it may even turn out to have been a good decision (is that a deafening chorus of "yeah, righs" I hear?) The sad thing as far as I can see, is that the logo is everything it was briefed not to be... It's not edgy (except in the sense that there are lots of straight bits), it's not modern, it's not brash (unless it was meant to look like Lisa Simpson engaged in a little fellatio) and it has nothing whatsoever to do with London or the Olympics. Now if instead of taking what looked like the safe option, seb and crew had taken a risk and done something genuinely edgy and london focused like giving the job to Banksy (definitley without a pitch or any conditions), perhaps we'd all be startled, amused, shocked etc in a far more intersting way.
Stefan Butterfield - 13/06/2007
I look at it again too, and i want to go 'no, no, no'. I know it breaks (good) design rules. It's clunky. it's dangerously close to being all 'down wid da kids' and horrible. The colours are kinda yuk. And it doesn't seem to have any visual references to London or the Olympics. It is seriously wierd. Yet...it feels iconic. Already. Maybe someone has engineered the fervent response - but if so then they've done a good job.
Martin McEwan - 14/06/2007
Why should it be a surprise that Wolff Olins were appointed without showing design ideas? Following on from Martin & Katrina, as professionals, do we not understand what brand strategy is? The last thing to be produced should be the logo itself - let's get the brand values sorted, the brand story right, the substance of how experiencing the brand, seeing and taking part in the games etc, it's legacy etc. And let's have all the stakeholders singing the same tune. That's what Wolff Olins got £400k for (well, a bit of it would have been on the 40,00 brand "elements"), not the logo. Which is a good job - having (in my humble opinion) got more or less everything else in the brand strategy about right, I wouldn't pay £1.50 for the logo. I hope to be proved wrong about that over the next 5 years...
Ben Damshenas - 15/06/2007
Alcock you have no taste anyway.