mercredi 17 décembre 2008

Cable and Wireless versus LIME ? the taste is sour...

Leaving in the Caribbean and working in all the region, I feel to say something about the corporate image change of Cable and Wireless.

This change of marketing option is a desaster. My fruits vendor in the market said: from Cable and Wireless to Lime ? this is sour !

The company hired to create the entire thing is, as I heard, from Australia. I am as a strong advocate of Culture and self representation and I regret that these guys ignore totally the cultural representation of the islands.

First the choice of color make no sense in the environnement - black as an identity ???
- hello !! here black is the color of mourning and devils during carnaval ! It is as well a color associated to Africa which is very low rated in the scale of values (ask slavery system about this !).
So here we are: LIME employees all in black...
and perception of the public is, is he/she autie died ?

The other impact of this colour is on marketing material. The black is used on bus stops, shops, cars. Have you even stay in a black house in the Caribbean ?
LIME seems to promote the climate change ! this is like an oven... thanks to Lime think-tank team and brilliant consultants.

Second the little illustration for communication: a mouth with the tongue out, is quite absurd in our context. This still a rude attitude here (behave yourself!), and the design inspired by the famous Rolling stone tongue is even not nice...
I've seen in St Lucia a wooden restaurant shop with an ugly soft sandwich designed on it... is that supposed to represent food ? where ?

My question is what is the cost of this mutation ? is the company never considered the people in the Caribbean ?

Well as an illustration, here is a little house "boutique" in Belles in Dominica before and after !
I interviewed the guy who was painting it: he said it is ugly but the company change is giving him a lot of work ... so it look like at the end not everybody is complaining !

Aucun commentaire: