Hasta La Ideas

This year has seen a lot of anger over re-branding efforts, from Tropicana‘s ill-fated container redesign to the flare up over Pepsi‘s multi-million dollar logo redo. Though it’s been a few months since these hot outbursts, they certainly haven’t gone away completely. We turn to something on a slightly smaller scale, but fun and topical none the less. In Bristol, hometown of street artist Banksy, the city council decided to spend millions of pounds in rebuilding the local industrial museum, technically “The Museum of Bristol” but known familiarly and on pieces of advertising as “M Shed.” From that big pile of money, they’d set aside some to work with ad agency True North in order to come up with some sort of exciting new brand. Months later, what did they come up with? That’s right: “M Shed.” Their bill? £100,000. This has locals up in arms, asking why their tax dollars went into a project only to have the same name come out, and the city council responding in a sort of “It’s been decided. Deal with it.” fashion:

“The review is still on-going, however, the re-branding has been agreed and is going ahead.

“It will give the new museum a distinct identity and, at the same time demonstrate its direct relationship to the council’s other, excellent museums, galleries and archives.”

To be fair, we haven’t read if the fee covered just the re-naming or also included design work, which would make this a whole different story, to be sure. Though judging from the response and the involvement by taxpayer activist groups, it does seem a little like that was the entirety of what was included in the fee.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.