Wolff Olins

Today, a former PC student and current employee of Wolff Olins, Todd Simmons, spoke at school during our weekly seminar. The branding firm, based in NYC, London and Dubai has a pretty impressive list of clients. The work shown today was really incredible and it was interesting to hear about the firm's personal strategies and approaches to branding and design. Some of their clients include :

(RED)

Adidas

Mercedes

Starbucks

Sunglass Hut

Target

Unicef

Wa Mu

Sony Ericsson

and tons more

check out their site here

(from their website:)

Wolff Olins is a brand business. From London, New York and Dubai, we work strategically with ambitious organizations around the world. We help them not to predict the future, but to invent it. Not to make small improvements, but fundamental change. We help them to focus, to grow, to perform better, and to connect with customers.

To take three examples, we helped GE become customer-centric. We helped Tate to change the way people see art. And we helped Tata to become a world brand.

We’re 140 people, ambitious for clients, and optimistic for the world.

It wasnt long before Todd broached the topic of the 2012 London Olympic Games logo, which has received a plethora of media coverage, mostly from people who strongly dislike the logo. The logo was created by the London office of Wolf Olins, and some of the feedback from the public is quite hilarious. Todd showed one video of Jon Stewart's reaction on The Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
London Logo
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Pretty entertaining. I've been looking up other blogs/articles written on the logo and its an interesting read to say the least. Todd explained that they wanted a logo that didn't specifically speak to the city of London, but their strategy apparently backfired. On the bright-side, even though the publicity was negative, it was publicity nonetheless.