Volume 116: GoslingVue.

1. Barbie’s Boyfriend’s Contact Lens Business Curiously Sells Band-Aids.

tl;dr: J&J unveils execrable Kenvue name & mediocre identity.

Oh, deary, deary me. How dire. I’ve talked before about how J&J is in the process of exploiting some fairly dubious legal practices pioneered by the private equity industry to insulate shareholders of its largest and fastest-growing business (pharma and medical devices) from the legal fallout of its talc debacle (in summary, J&J has reportedly known for decades that Johnson’s Baby Powder contains asbestos, a cancer-causing agent, which is potentially going to cost billions in class action lawsuits, so they’re trying to wriggle out by spinning off a new company to house the talc liabilities; one that declares instant bankruptcy upon creation).

As a further part of this process, it’s also about to spin out the entirety of its low-growth consumer products business that makes the likes of Tylenol, Band-Aid, and Listerine. This will have two intended impacts. First, it will remove the drag of the slow-growing consumer products business on the stock price, which should help the remaining J&J grow its market value faster. And second, it will create a further layer of legal protection relative to the talc debacle I just referenced.

While that was all announced a while ago, they’ve now revealed the name of the new company: Kenvue. That’s right; it sounds like a contact lens company founded by Ryan Gosling, Barbie’s perennially tanned and smiling boyfriend, only it doesn’t seem to include any of J&Js contact lens businesses, while it does sell Band-Aids and mouthwash. Weird.

Lippincott created this name (were I in their shoes, I’d want that kept quiet). It’s based on a colloquial Scottish ism “ken” as in “know,” allied with “Vue,” which phonetically references sight and has become a cliche in contact lens circles. I’m guessing it was sold as representative of the client’s “visionary intelligence,” which sounds seriously warm and fuzzy if you’re in charge of an unloved business getting the ceremonial boot, but unfortunately, does nothing to hide the fact that Kenvue is an atrociously bad name and deserves to be on every wall of shame. (Look, I’m Scottish, and even I think the rationalization of ken in this instance is daft).

To prove how much of a nightmare of a process this must have been, Wolff Olins was then tasked with the visual identity. Considering that Lippincott isn’t a standalone naming agency, this almost certainly means Lippincott was initially hired to do the name and the identity but screwed up the identity somehow, which led to J&J hiring Wolff Olins to swoop in and save the day. Presumably, as a fast-burn and high-pressure emergency project without much budget since all the time and money had already been used up. (I can tell you from experience that this is precisely how such projects happen).

This, at least, provides two reasons to excuse the identity itself for failing to pass the first cliche it stumbled upon; rounded forms equalling the consumer and hard edges, science. FML. Sigh.

Goodness knows what Lippincott’s work must’ve looked like if this got chosen. The type is weird, with a poorly matched combo of upper and lowercase, and the symbol looks like a giant ass exiting a doorway. I know it’s meant to be a sideways heart, but it looks like an ass. It’s also bizarre to put a heart of any kind onto a brand that’ll be sold through and competes with CVS, which already has a heart as a logo, just right side up, and a lot less ass-like. Ah well.

There’s zero conceptual cohesiveness going on here. I mean, it would take a heroic feat of rhetorical brilliance to explain how an ass exiting a doorway relates back to a business having visionary intelligence, not to mention the randomness of the consumer and science angle, but there you go. It’s hard to be conceptually consistent when you’re almost certainly panicking your way through a Fear and Loathing meets Squid Game of a process.

It would also be deeply unfair to blame Lippincott and Wolff Olins solely. The whole thing reeks of client politics, and the two-agency thing suggests chaos. And none of what I’ve mentioned even brings me to the stated purpose of “realizing the extraordinary power of everyday care,” which seems even further disconnected conceptually. I’m also guessing it’s aspirational, so please wake me when Kenvue does something extraordinary, as long as I’m not dead by then. Thanks.

Overall, this combo of a feces-grade name with a mediocre and cliched identity leaves you wondering two things: 1. What went wrong in the process that this was the result? And 2. Doesn’t anyone have any professional pride left anymore?

Finally, while it’s easy to dunk on agencies, as I have done here and as others have done to me, this particular job really does shine a harsh light on clients, who, while they might not be doing the work themselves, do create the conditions within which the work happens, and are responsible for the final outcome. I’d really love to know what went wrong here and to better understand why this ended up the way it did. Then we could devise a solution, so nobody need ever do a Kenvue ever again.

2. Timelessness. What a Sham of an Idea.

tl;dr: Timeless design just means suitably familiar.

Unfortunately, this week there isn’t all that much going on unless you include advertising agencies breaking out the recession playbook, talking heads crowing “told you so” over e-commerce struggles, and varied people attacking/defending Adidas over Kanye West. (If you’ve been living under a rock, Ye recently made anti-semitic comments that put corporate partners under pressure to cut ties. Yes, Adidas took too long to respond. No, it won’t cause irreparable brand harm).

Anyway, since all of the above are depressing, I figured I’d talk about timelessness in design instead.

Whenever you do identity work for a client, there’s almost always someone in the room who’ll look at the options on the table and decide that some are “too out there,” some “too trendy,” and one or two “timeless.” And whenever they say timeless, they really mean, “I like it. It’s familiar enough to make me feel comfortable and inoffensive enough that I won’t have to defend it.”

So, let’s decode timelessness for a second because often, it’s a trap we should be careful to avoid.

First, there’s no such thing as timelessness. Everything we do has roots in the time in which it was created or is reflective of a time to which it hearkens back. The easiest way to spot this is to look at our built environment. Walk around any major global city, and you’ll find a bunch of buildings that are hundreds of years old, plenty from the 20th century, and some that are bleeding-edge contemporary. Which of these buildings is timeless? None of them. Does it matter? Not one whit. How long will they be around? Hundreds of years, potentially.

I mention this last point because clients love the idea of timelessness because they’re desperately afraid of the work aging and needing a facelift at some future date. I get that, but if there’s one thing we should never do, it’s to second guess the future. We don’t know what the future holds and how tastes will change, so holding up an impossible criterion like timelessness ahead of much more important criteria like difference doesn’t make much sense. Plus, identities get tweaked for relevance all the time precisely because this fabled timelessness does not exist.

Furthermore, I find it hard to fathom the idea of timeless when it’s most often used to describe simple, reduced modernism. An aesthetic that didn’t exist until the mid-20th century. If the entirety of human history is around 200,000 years, how can something of such recency be timeless? Well, simply put, it can’t.

So, what’s really going on?

Well, I hinted at it earlier. When we say timeless, what we really mean is familiar, inoffensive, and bland. It stands up through time because there isn’t anything to like about it or loathe about it, so there’s nothing to age. In other words, timeless design is the Prozac of branding. It eliminates the highs and the lows, leaving us with middle-of-the-road instead. However, unlike a patient taking anti-depressants, where being middle-of-the-road is a desirable state, in branding, it is not. It just makes you generic and anonymous.

Genericism relative to brands and branding is like lighting your money on fire. If the visual identity has no defining characteristics, is un-noticable, won’t be remembered, and is hard to recognize amid a sea of same, it doesn’t matter how timeless it might be. It’s just bad.

So, what’s the alternative?

First, we need to encourage our clients not to have timelessness as a criterion for the reasons I mentioned above. Second, we need to better decode the visual tropes, trends, and patterns that already exist in the competitive visual landscape, specifically so we can recommend avoiding them. And finally, we need to focus on what it means to be different, to stand out, and to represent a conceptual idea that nobody else has.

If I had to put my finger on just one thing, it would be this: We should always push toward the progressive and the unfamiliar. To create something that will stand out, that will be different, that will be noticeable and noticed, and that will cut through the visual clutter because this is what matters. And as it ages, we’ll go in and fix it as we’ve always done.

Timelessness, by contrast, does not matter. It’s always been a sham. It just means old enough to be familiar, yet not so old as to seem old-fashioned.

3. Is Message Enough?

Tl:dr: Ruminating on proposals.

This one will be quick as I’ve been busy doing new business and writing proposals, which is never the most fun way to spend your week but is essential, nevertheless.

The fun aspect of new business is always listening to prospective clients outline their issues, concerns, and aspirations. Helping to diagnose problems and opportunities and uncover potential avenues for solutions is always a blast. However, it’s curious how often a prospective client lays out fundamental issues - perhaps a business model weakness, a sales channel that’s losing relevance, a brand that’s been serially underinvested in, or perhaps even a product problem, and then outlines their desired solution as…a message.

Now, don’t get me wrong, having a strong message is paramount in these ADHD times, where it’s hard to catch attention and be remembered for doing so, but I can’t help but question the validity of message as solution for every type of problem a brand might have.

Now, I have a fair idea of why this happens. Most often, it’s because the person I’m talking to sees the bigger issues, but they only have permission and authority over messaging. Occasionally, they genuinely think a new message is the solution, and sometimes I get the feeling it’s RFP boilerplate that nobody really thought that much about.

Now, where I’ve messed up in the past is in taking on such a project and delivering a strategy, positioning, idea, or whatever, that requires more than just a change in messaging to deliver. Now, if the client is expecting this and agrees, then it’s OK. But if they’re not, it can accidentally lead to recrimination. This can be especially shocking if you know a message isn’t enough to resolve the problem and thought you were providing a path to a better solution. However, years ago, I learned the hard way that a better solution doesn’t much matter if the client feels blindsided by something outwith their scope to deliver.

So, nowadays, I’m always careful in how I parse this. When the ask is for a differentiated message, and I see a deeper requirement for a differentiated offer, I lay these out as different options along a spectrum. So, for example, option one might be message-driven, option two might require some degree of broader change, and option three might require a great deal of non-messaging change. This way, pulses are being lowered, and we can have a deeper discussion on what the company has the appetite for and what it would take to deliver. All the sure knowledge that a message solution is covered.

Anyway, as I say, it’s a quickie. But I figured it might be useful for anyone facing a similar situation. When it comes to clients, “no surprises” should be every consultant’s mantra.