Enterprise Florida, a public-private partnership that funds official state economic development initiatives, paid $380,000 for this logo:
Many lady Floridians are peeved about it since, aside from the period immediately following the release of the film Annie Hall in 1977, men’s neckties haven’t served as an inclusive symbol that encompasses both sexes.
The article linked above is all about the tie in the logo, but it also features this video publicized by the same outfit:
All the hands in the video appear to be attached to men, with the possible exception of the gloved hands, which look decidedly masculine, but who knows?
I can see how maybe one all-male piece of advertising collateral slipped under the radar (though a competent creative director should have caught it). But the all-male video too? Now it’s harder to see this as an honest mistake.
We Florida business ladies are being dissed! And did Enterprise Florida really pay $380,000 US dollars for that logo? (If so, I’d like to speak to them about some land I’m putting on the market, teeming with biodiversity and mere centimeters from the surface!)
This branding initiative was unveiled by Governor Voldemort, who slashed funding for the disabled and schools so he could attempt to zero out the corporate tax rate. Those tea-people really get financial stewardship.
Please feel free to discuss whatever.
[X-posted at Rumproast]
Jerzy Russian
I could have done something similar for far less money. How come no one ever asks me for logos?
Capri
The logo/branding business is pretty damn lucrative. Purdue dropped $600,000 to come up with “Makers All”
Short Bus Bully
I think Alec Baldwin said it best on 30 Rock when confronted with the idea “businesswoman” might be a more p.c. term than “businessman“:
“I don’t think that’s a real word.”
eemom
where’s the droooonez? It’s like a different planet from the rest of the blogiverse.
Violet
That logo is kind of weirdly retro 80’s or something. Definitely plays off the citrus thing.
mouse tolliver
I supposed we should all be glad the “i” in Florida isn’t shaped like a penis. They got almost $400K for picking a font and replacing a letter with an object that is vaguely shaped like the missing letter. Some people clearly do not have to work hard for their money.
hildebrand
Any advice for the on-campus interview for a tenure-track job? I have been diligent in my prep thus far, but am always glad to read good ideas from folks who have gone through this.
schrodinger's cat
At least the logo is Muslim friendly or is it Green Revolution friendly, like Sully? BTW how is his new site. Has anybody here become a member?
Ash Can
Those hands all look pretty white as well. I think the State of Florida is trying to tell us something, other than what it explicitly states in its commercial.
Violet
@hildebrand: Advice for any interview is to remember that you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Make sure you learn what you need to learn to decide if it’s the place for you as much as anything else. Good luck!
Jamobey
Isn’t that the Tropicana font? Somebody got ripped off.
japa21
Many years ago I was making a living (sort of) selling furniture for a national department store chain. One of our mattress suppliers created an exclusive set of bedding for the chain and all the salespeople were involved in creating a name for it.
And believe me, a name does make a difference. I came up with the winner and thousands of sets of mattresses were made with the name I created. Sales were robust. My reward? A $25 gift certificate.
I can truly say, the name I came up with (now long forgotten) was probably more effective than this logo.
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat: I inadvertently ended up on Sully’s new site while searching for something last night. It looks similar to previous sites–fonts seem the same, logo is similar. You can see everything on the front page, but if you click the “continue” link, I think that part might be members only.
Ash Can
@Jamobey: If Tropicana were to sue the state gov’t for copyright infringement and win, I’d never buy any other brand of orange juice again.
FormerSwingVoter
Don’t underestimate how thick-headed men can be when it comes to sexism. It’s usually not because the men in question think that women’s views are inferior to their own – it’s that they don’t think about women’s views at all. The very idea that a woman might look at the world around her and form opinions based on that is something that a lot of men honestly never consider.
Well, certain types of men, anyway.
General Stuck
We don’t worry much about bidness here in the Land of Enchantment. It’s all about, we’ll do it manana, so as to guard against running out of things to do.
Our main purpose is to create a buffer that war doesn’t break out between Texas and Arizona, so our main industry is making positive vibes and building a runway to the stars. And listening for intergalactic noise. Alien chatter. That kind of shit.
We have equality between men and women, in that all slackers are created equal.
MattF
So, the concept is that their privates are public? I can see that.
Betty Cracker
@FormerSwingVoter: Which is why it’s an excellent idea to have a diverse creative team.
Thefix
@hildebrand: don’t drink, be yourself, assume everything good or ill that happens is part of the interview, give your job talk like you’re teaching a class (that is, not as a conference presentation), smiles smiles smiles, BE YOURSELF, ask softball questions to the faculty and hardball questions to the dean (but no salary/ bennies/tenure queries yet), try to meet students if you can (let your faculty handlers know you want to meet students), don’t throw shade at other schools, be friendly but not obsequious; if you have any other offers do not let them know.
trollhattan
@Capri:
Now don’t go picking on Purdue, they might shoot you with a pingpong ball.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9zBGgpzl0I&feature=youtu.be
I mentioned yesterday that Rick Perry is spending cash money advertising Texas in California. Florida might have a better shot, if only because it’s not Texas. Also, too, there are a lot of Californians who don’t read Hiaasen.
Roger Moore
Anyone want to bet on the number of women working on this project? I think the under/over line is 0.5.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
They’re both going to have to line up behind Nevada, which has been doing much the same thing for quite a while. It also has the advantage of being close enough to California that businesses based there still have a reasonable hope of marketing to Californians, and they can even sponge off our UC/CSU systems.
kindness
No wimmen’s hands? Who was makin’ the sammiches then?
Thank God no one can kick me over the web.
I think the logo would have been more effective if it had a chopped up line of cocaine going across it. Florida you know.
trollhattan
As it’s an open thread, during the Alabama standoff, this happened, locally.
Yes, it’s yet another 2nd Amendment remedy of one’s pesky life and the lives of those closest to him and most dependent on him, but there’s more: Mr. Marshall was an airline pilot and a published 9/11 truther.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I take no comfort in the notion of being flown by a delusional, paranoid, homicidal, suicidal blowhard. Or for that matter, being anywhere other than a bomb shelter when he’s airborne. (I’ve been rather near the family home, for that matter.)
What the hell are we going to do, as a nation, to keep the other Phillip Marshalls out of the pilot’s chair and unarmed?
Those poor, poor children. Where are their freedoms?
http://boingboing.net/2013/02/04/former-pilot-and-911-conspira.html#more-210840
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Is there a net bidnez or job loss to Nevada from California? I wonder, since they have higher unemployment, higher foreclosure rates, lower home values…what am I saying, it’s perfect!
Betsy
@FormerSwingVoter: That’s how Scarah Failin got chosen, certainly. A bunch of Republicans ( = men) were in a room, and when the possibility was aired, they all said, “Wow! She’s hot! I bet the chicks will LOVE her!”
Shortage of empathy explains a lot about today’s GOP.
Betsy
@Betty Cracker: Yep. See “Failin, Scarah” above.
Just One More Canuck
What happened was that a bunch of the boys in the ad agency were yukkin it up in the 19th hole when someone realized that they needed to have the new logo completed by February 1, so they scribbled that down so they could get back to more important things
Walker
@hildebrand:
Remember that the interview is never over until you leave. Everything you say at lunch or at dinner, no matter how informal the meeting, is considered. But at the same time should not be overly formal in these situations, for fear of saying the wrong thing.
PurpleGirl
Having gone through the process of preparing a new ad campaign at the non-profit, I think I can describe what happened. (FYI, the nonprofit only paid printing costs, the branding agency donated the creative work (haha).)
Okay, so you have a team of 5 or 6 people (possibly fewer). You have a graphic designer and a computer font expert in the group.) They come up with a couple of ideas. They try out different fonts, draw the “i” in a couple of ways. They have discussions of all the ideas and some conferences with the client. Then they prepare boards of all the ideas. Show the boards to the client. Maybe they have one or two printed, maybe even in different colors. More discussions, more client conferences. Finally they decide which one(s) to do as “final” copy for another round of conferences. And, viola, the cost is $380,000, easy.
Since my nonprofit was doing a whole campaign, just the printing of the samples (posters, handout sheets, etc.) came to about $200,000. I forget what the final printing came to. (We did special fundraising amoung Trustees to cover this project.)
jl
@trollhattan: NV is picking up manufacturing bidness from CA, but not sure how much of that is due to better transportation hub to rest of US from NV compared to CA Central Valley and Inland Empire (which were where it was hoped to go), as opposed to CA tax awfulness.
Anyway, the employment gains are significant for NV, especially around Reno and Carson City, but small beans for CA. Greater SF Bay Area economy still growing faster than CA or US average I think.
Good luck to Gubernator Hairbeam Perry. Though Perry himself probably not the optimal face of TX to appeal to CAians.
Edit: Sadly I am not surprised by the FL ad campaign chauvinism.
Southern Beale
Reason number 3,428 why I’m still boycotting Florida.
Comrade Dread
@kindness: Or a giant boa constrictor or a gator or an old guy on a Medicare scooter with a tea party sign.
TG Chicago
Does anybody know when Nancy Lanza purchased the AR-15 that Adam Lanza used in the Newtown massacre?
I ask because the AR-15 was banned by the Assault Weapons ban, right? So if she bought it after 9/13/04, then we could have kept that gun out of Adam Lanza’s hands if we had extended the Assault Weapons ban.
Seems like that would be good to know.
(as a side note, I’d change the wording to instead refer to “Massacre Weapons”. Any gun can be easily used in an “assault”. But certain guns and extended clips are designed not for personal protection or for hunting, but for killing groups of people. That’s a massacre, so we should call them Massacre Weapons.)
jl
Though, if the ad campaign is implying that fluorescent orange ties are work appropriate in FL, that might attract a fun crowd of old boys.
grape_crush
It’s not even a very creative logo, is it? Rather obvious, in fact.
LanceThruster
They could make the “R” into ‘sweater puppies’ and a skirt?
trollhattan
@jl:
It’s true that the Reno area has snagged a lot of warehousing and distribution, certainly some of it out of CA’s hide. Ironically, California tribal gamb1ing is massacring [boy, I crack myself up] the Reno [places one gives away money the name of which gets a hearty FYWP] and I’ll wager net jobs for that metro area show a loss to California. (Not that tribal gamb1ing helps our economy much, but it keeps our gamblers in-state.)
Phoenix_rising
@Jamobey:
Somebody did, but the lawyers who bill Tropicana $325 an hour to vigorously defend its intellectual property are currently out buying themselves boats.
I should open a graphic design shop that runs all our ideas through the USPTO before getting them out to the client.
LanceThruster
As a business motif, they also could have made the “I” a pen…is that still too phallic?
Origuy
Donald Trump has filed suit against Bill Maher, who said that he bet Trump $5 million that his biological father was an orangutan. (PDF) Popcorn, anyone?
LanceThruster
@Origuy:
OMG! Seriously?
That will go the same way as the Larry Flynt/Jerry Falwell suit.
trollhattan
@Origuy:
Donald took the bait? Since you already called “popcorn” I’ll handle the beer concession.
We’ll be millllionaires!
kindness
@Origuy: When The Donald finally becomes old and senile….no one will know. He won’t appear any different.
jl
@trollhattan: Yes, I have Reno Carson City relatives, and I big and regular hear complaints about CA casinos. Enough to even get tightwad me to drop a (very) few demonstration bucks gambling in Reno to show I sympathize.
Problem is that there are so many penny slots now, it takes too long. I guess I should just give to a Reno charity instead.
SiubhanDuinne
@mouse tolliver:
Oh, wait.
jl
@trollhattan:
Original comment in moderation due to bad words. Try again:
Yes, I have Reno Carson City relatives, and I hear big and regular complaints about CA c * s * n * z. Enough to even get tightwad me to drop a (very) few demonstration bucks gr*mbl1ng in Reno to show I sympathize.
Problem is that there are so many penny s**ts now, it takes too long. I guess I should just give to a Reno charity instead.
SiubhanDuinne
Obligatory FYWP. Betty? Help?
Jennifer
The worst thing about that logo is that it’s ugly.
The second worst thing is that it looks retro, which means old, which just reminds you that Florida is full of old people who never figured out how to hook up the VCR before DVDs came out. That’s not an image that says “cutting edge” to attract the types of business best for the economy, wages, or the environment.
But I’m not surprised that this is Governor Voldemort’s answer to a sluggish state economy. Re-branding is pretty much the only thing the GOP does these days.
We need to have a BJ competition to re-design that logo. My entry will feature a middle-aged fat white guy “standing his ground” and shooting a duskier-hued individual. There will be a stripe through the “Florida” tracing the path of the bullet he’s just fired. I’m fine with keeping “the perfect climate for business” as the tagline though…combined with my graphic, it will just reinforce the idea that a violent, poorly-governed backward banana republic is probably not the best place to locate a forward-looking business.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
That’s a necktie? I thought it was a penis. And here I was thinking Fla has come so far since Anita Bryant.
LanceThruster
@Jennifer:
But pair that tie with some loud plaid slacks, and you have ultra chic country club attire a la “Caddyshack.”
xD
Maude
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Are you thinking of Lorraine Bobbit?
SiubhanDuinne
I watched that video again. In addition to the malefaction (see what I did there?), I can’t help noticing the overwhelming whiteness of these hands.
Just One More Canuck
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: Insert obligatory “America’s Wang” reference
trollhattan
@jl: .
Bwa-ha-ha, Jerry, today, on Goodhair’s ad buy.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/02/jerry-brown-calls-texas-gov-rick-perrys-ad-barely-a-fart.html#storylink=cpy
I’m definitely enjoying Jerry V2.0.
RSA
@hildebrand:
Congratulations! Good luck. My interviews (at research universities) were many years ago, but I’ve seen a lot of job seekers since then…
My advisor advised me to give an hourglass-shaped talk: Broad and general in the beginning, then narrowing until you’ve left almost everyone in the room behind with your brilliance, and then broad again at the end for the entire audience. It worked for me, but it might not for everyone or every situation.
It’s good to know as much as possible about what other people in your area are doing, because someone will probably ask whom you might work with and what you might do together.
It helps to be prepared for questions from uninformed or even hostile faculty (who may support a different candidate), to defuse disagreements or misunderstandings quickly.
If someone asks, “Why are you interested in this job?” with the possible implication that you might be hired at a better place, it’s good to have a sincere answer about why this specific job is the best match for you, and you for it.
Starlit
@trollhattan: Would that be Hiassen as a warning of what they’re in for, or just Hiassen as proof that there are actual witty writers in Florida who aren’t Dave Barry (who hasn’t been funny in years)?
I think there’s another writer who created a character so memorable that I’ve forgotten the writer’s name, because his creation just blots him out…”Serge Storms.” Think Dexter, but with severe ADHD and a firmer commitment to mayhem than to murder.
peorgietirebiter
@Betty Cracker: either way it’s hard to imagine spending $300k without a bunch of focus groups that included businesswomen. Boondoggel billing from a RNC approved chop shop.
hildebrand
@RSA: My thanks for the great advice.
mainmati
@TG Chicago: Excellent point. You don’t need a 30 round clip to kill a deer or, for that matter, to stop a home intruder. The Gun Nuts are sick, sick, sick.
TheMightyTrowel
@hildebrand: Don’t want to repeat other people;s comments, but in case no one’s said this:
research research research. Find out who is in the department, who isn’t in the department but contributes to teaching and research. See if you can figure out their 5 year research plan (most places have something similar) explicitly frame your research and teaching priorities in the language they use to talk about theirs. Also, smile. Be friendly. Relax. Sometimes these things work out, mostly they don’t. Enjoy the experience, enjoy the food, don’t get drunk if they give you booze.
Another Halocene Human
Apologies if this has been said, but that logo appears to have escaped from 1978.
At least when my town exchanged one stupid logo for another, the bleeping Chamber of Commerce had the decency to pay for the bleeding consultants themselves!
WaterGirl
All the advice to hildebrand was excellent. Really impressive!