addthis new year and new branding tactics.

From jeffwongdesign

this year my goal is to give addthis more personality and charisma—to create not just an icon that means "share/bookmark", but something fun... really fun. something that can communicate humor, feelings, and become something people love. this is a goal i'm really excited about because our entire team really embraces the direction. ultimately, i think it would be even better if we could make our logo open source for anyone to play with. if you know anything about branding, you'll know that people define the brand, not the company. what i hope to create with the team is an avatar.


for the sake of simplicity, read "The Brand Gap", by marty neumeier. he captures alot of what a brand should be in a nutshell. the book takes about 45 minutes to read, and it's easy to understand. you can get a quick sample of it in this presentation.

one of the slides says, "how do you know when an idea is innovative?". answer: "when it scares the hell out of everybody". i don't think this scares the hell outta everyone, but it sure does feel good. it's been a while when i was worried about bastardizing a logo... but for some reason, it feels very web 2.0. it feels right. it breaks the rules. i love it.

what do you think?