Countdown to W?
by Lindsay Yee
This is a post from my blog, for more visit Brands New Zealand blog
Progressive enterprises is to phase out it’s Woolworths and Foodtown Supermarkets in New Zealand over the next five years (as per this article on stuff) and put in place a ‘new generation Countdown’. So an update of the Countdown brand was in order.
So another change to a rounded bold humanist sans serif, which reminds me of the Kodak rebrand. The move away from the complementary red and green that sat horribly together to a white background is much better on everyone’s eyes. And although the Kodak change felt, to me, that it was unresolved the Countdown rebrand sits a little better, although the ‘n’s seem to descend below the baseline optically.
Now onto the Logo mark at first glance I immediately remembered the Woolworths rebrand in Australia and now all I see is an Apple and a ‘W’, but I guess at a stretch you could say it was a ‘c’ and ‘d’. I can’t help but feel let down that they didn’t use a new logo.
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Sep 29th
2010
October 5th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Looking forward to the fracas with Apple over the logo. We came up with the “Shop Smarter” tagline for Dress-Smart around 18 months ago, so were rather dismayed when Progressive started using it. Do they have no original ideas?
October 6th, 2009 at 10:17 am
The ‘W’ is actually for Woolworths in Australia, it seems odd that they would carry this through to New Zealand when it has no tie in to the Countdown brand other than ownership and the fact they sell apples.
Seems like Countdown should have its own mark to me. Surely New Zealand’s largest chain of supermarkets deserves to?
Apple have opposed the brand in Australia, and this smacks of the New York branding issue some time back. Oh and in that one the apple was an ‘N’ instead of a ‘W’.
October 9th, 2009 at 11:15 am
More on the opposition to the use of the ‘apple’ in the new identity from apple here: http://www.stoppress.co.nz/news/2009/10/apple-vs-woolworths-logo-war/?utm_source=stoppress&utm_medium=Friday&utm_campaign=October9
Could mean we don’t actually see this new brand identity rolled out across NZ?
To me – the two companies operate in quite different retail spaces and I feel there is enough of a difference in the application of the concept to both exist.
Isn’t brand more than just the ‘logo’ anyway? ‘A brand is your gut feeling’ – http://www.slideshare.net/coolstuff/the-brand-gap
November 5th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Ah—FF Cocon! Makes me think of durex condoms and Tip Top bread. Don’t like the three dimensional apple logo—it looks dated already.