Circulation is down. Ad revenue is down. Staffers are facing week-long furloughs, yet again. There are whispers that USA Today is in trouble. The classifieds business is pretty much gone. Newspapers are dying. The broadcast business isn't much better. Even the company-backed Newseum is a disaster.
So what's Gannett going to do?
Change its corporate logo and slogan, of course. Of course.
That's the spiffy new logo—guess they laid off most of the company's designers amid all that cost-cutting. And that's the equally plain new corporate slogan: "It's all within reach."
Scintillating. That's really gonna make me run out and buy a Gannett paper. Corporate rebranding—yeah, that's the ticket. As has already been pointed out, it worked so well for Knight Ridder. Remember them?
What a joke. What exactly does Gannett gain from this farce? A fresh coat of paint on the corporate logo and a meaningless slogan aren't going to move the needle at all.
And what does Gannett lose? Do the math. How many hours of high-priced executive and consultant time went into choosing and market-testing the new logo and slogan? Plenty. How much is it going to cost to change stationery, reprint business cards, update signage, run ads, etc., to implement and publicize the new logo? Conveniently, Gannett isn't saying, although CEO Craig Dubow allows that it's "significant." It's safe bet that "significant" means millions of dollars. (Not to be missed: The voluminous corporate-mandated guidelines on use, care and feeding of the new logo.)
Those are dollars that could have been used to keep Gannett's staffers from being furloughed, or to invest in interesting innovations and startups, or even to hire a few more reporters at the chain's staff-strapped papers. Instead, they're being thrown to the winds in a burst of corporate-suite ego that's right up there with Gannett's elephantine—and increasingly empty—corporate headquarters in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. (Hey Gannetteers: If you haven't been to corporate HQ, you've missed the eye-popping experience of strolling across the highly polished marble floor of the building's vast, arena-sized lobby to the security desk located about a football-field's length from the front doors. I kid you not. See photos below. The annual costs of heating and cooling that cavernous empty space probably could pay for another round of city hall or cop reporters at several Gannett papers.)
Gannett's not totally dumb—the company has some interesting local and advertising initiatives going on. For instance, check out TheBoldItalic, its sharp, stealthy San Francisco site for 20-somethings. Smart stuff.
But spending millions for a corporate rebranding to adopt a blah new logo and dumb slogan? Not so smart.
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