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Fighting Poverty and Poor Design

One of my favorite charities, Mercy Corps, just launched a new logo, tagline and brand design. The face of efficient, dignified and effective humanitarian aid, Mercy Corps has once again reinforced their committment and love for their core competency: helping people. As a global brand, they've gained the trust of both the people who give and the people who receive, by avoiding some of the uncomfortable traits associated with many organizations in their line of work. The ideology, politics, religious activism and accountability controversies that surround many other NGOs don't seem to haunt Mercy Corps. Is this because they hide their ulterior motives so well? Or is it because their mission is so transparent? I for one feel that when I deal with Mercy Corps, there's nothing between myself and the people I want to help. My focus - saving a child, digging a well or helping in some way I haven't the insight to imagine - feels fully realized, because the Mercy Corps vision is so focused. Mercy Corps incites you to make a difference, because it instills in you the belief that you can. That is a powerful brand!

As for their elegant new look and logo, the connotation is more feminine, more earthy and more hopeful than the old one. The gestural stroke of the logo humanizes while the design implies a sprout, an angel and a child skipping rope. I'm sure the Rorschach could go on, but I doubt any of it is news to the folks at Mercy Corps. If anything, the new logo shows their focus, clarity and cleverness to a fault. Any further and I'm afraid it might be trite. "Be the change" seems to me to be the challenge, and its own reward. If you've ever had a jones for changing the world, Mercy Corps is definitely the place to go for a quick fix (or a bender, if you can afford it!)

I hope you'll rush right over to Mercy Corps and part with a little of your hard-earned cash. The hard-working people of Mercy Corps have the uncanny knack of transforming that paper into the currency of Peace.

Bad Translation

I was driving around town yesterday, listening to FM 103.1. A spot came on about E. Coli, with this VO couple going on about how E. Coli had all these great health products at my local drug store, and how E. Coli was going to save me money. E. Coli cosmetics? That's quite a mental picture. All I could think was that somebody must have been really shit-faced when they came up with this campaign (cue rimshot).

At first I assumed it was one of those jokey, millennial PSAs, you know, for kids...where we were gonna learn about why we should wash our hands, and how cool it was to not have diarrhea, and that E. Coli causes 1000's of cases of hurling a year and can even kill you, dude! But as I listened more carefully, I realized that I was terribly mistaken, or someone was. In fact, I was witnessing the huge grocery/drugstore chain Albertsons touting their latest discount health brand, "Equaline", which hit the markets in late 2004 at 25,000 locations in 37 states.

Wow. A line of health products that sounds like a deadly food-borne bacteria!
Perhaps "Equaline" wasn't the best mnemonic choice for radio. And perhaps I'm over-reacting a bit. But I also learned (via Google) that 'equiline' is also the name of a certain type of "horse estrogen" formerly used in menopause medications. Maybe it's just me, but I would have come up with something else - like "Goodforyas" or "Medicuddles". Nevertheless, it seems Equaline sales are up, and their packaging certainly makes things easy for worldwide brand integration. The only issue in the future might be if people actually do start hearing PSAs for (or rather, against) E. Coli: "For relief of symptoms associated with E. Coli, be sure to pick up some Equaline!"

Say it ten times fast, you'll see what I mean.

SEE AN EQUALINE RELEASE