This is Madness!
In Tuesday’s post, Matt Popkes summarized the first round of our sports-related competition of Madness taking place this March, which we cannot refer as a certain alliterative event for legal reasons. Popkes saw a few powerhouse logos lose to brands that we thought did not hold as much weight in terms of brand recognition or simplicity. Most notable upsets: #2 seeded Pepsi lost to H&M, #14 Red Bull (included as an afterthought and as a nod to our Creative Director’s favorite beverage) defeated the iconic AT&T logo, and the coup d’état of the first round was the heavily favored golden arches of McDonald’s losing for sentimental reasons to the hometown favorites that are the Portland Trail Blazers.
Other than a few surprising upsets in the first round, most of the first round went as the logo committee expected. Furthermore, we expected the rest of the round to be mostly chalk and there to be only the favorites winning.
Thanks to your votes on our Facebook page this week, we’ve narrowed the field down to 16 remaining logos.
[If you'd like to just vote for these matchups, you can VOTE ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE.]
Click to download bracket
So let’s dive into the second round to set up our Sweet Sixteen while I write in my favorite style: over-analyzed rants about minutia!
There’s not much to say about the North-West region, where Nike and three other logos advanced. Isn’t this entire region a contest to see who gets to lose to Nike? We can just pencil Nike in for the finals and just focus on who likely gets to lose to them. In the other regions, there is greater room for competition and interesting outcomes. I don’t know if you pick your preference in these battles based on simplicity, artistic merit, or how much you like the brand. I’m not here to tell you how to vote. I’m just the same as you: I want to vote on the best logos based on my instincts and my heart. But I beg of you, stop voting for logos which are literally the representation of their company name. Apple and Target? What is this? What came first, the logo or the company name? And when they did, what was asked for the logo? “Just make an apple.” “Just make a target.” I might understand the respect for these brands to put in the Sweet 16, especially when they square off weak logos in the first round. But do we really want to live in a world where the little Twitter bird or the NFL badge is less awesome than Apple’s apple or Target’s target? Come on. Help me out here. Please vote for a web-giant round by voting for Amazon and Google over these lazy logos.
There were some interesting happenings in the south-west region. There was one question our readers answered with authority: Pepsi or Coke? To which, the polls showed that the audience prefers German car manufacturers, as #1 Coke lost a heart-breaker to Mercedes, and #2 Pepsi lost to Audi. Volkswagon easily dispatched of #12 seed North Face. There is a 75% chance that the winner of this region will be a German car manufacturer. Interesting.
NBC vs GE
The only non-automobile match-up in this region was a very tough match-up as GE faced off against NBC. I called Mr. Jack Donaghy, who went from Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming for General Electric to President of NBC, to Chairman of GE. After tricking his assistant that I was actually Richard Nixon and still alive, I was able to get a few words with the man with a vested interest in both logos.
“Hello, Mr. Donaghy.”
“Who is this?”
“This is Matt Grantski. I’m a . . .”
“Stop right there. I don’t know how you got this number, but I do not speak with people whose title begins with an ‘a’ and not a ‘the.’”
“What?”
“If you introduce yourself with ‘the,’ you are THE President, or THE CEO or THE Ohio State University. If you introduce yourself with an ‘a,’ you are probably A barista or A pizza delivery boy or A farm-hand, whose knowledge of the English language and importance in society commands as much respect as A Polish army.”
“Hey!”
“Hay is for horses, which if I recall, makes up the majority of Poland’s cavalry?”
“I just want to . . . ”
“Do you know what sound a computer mouse makes?”
“I don’t . . . ”
*click*
Okay, so, whatever. Jack Donaghy didn’t provide much detailed analysis of whether he liked NBC or GE more, but NBC won anyway, and let’s never speak of this again.
Round of 32 Results
North-West Region
[1] Nike defeats [8] Yankees
[5] MTV defeats [4] Starbucks
[6] Playboy defeats [3] BMW
[7] Adidas defeats [2] Facebook
South-West Region
[8] Mercedes-Benz defeats [1] Coca-Cola
[4] Volkswagon defeats [12] North Face
[11] NBC defeats [3] GE
[10] Audi defeats [2] Pepsi
North-East Region
[1] Apple defeats [9] Twitter
[4] Amazon defeats [12] Levi’s
[6] Google defeats [14] Red Bull
[2] Target defeats [7] NFL
South-East Region
[9] Toyota defeats [16] Portland Trail Blazers
[5] Olympics defeats [4] NBA
[3] ESPN defeats [6] UPS
[2] FedEx defeats [7] Microsoft
Polls are open for the next round, VOTE ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
Disclaimer: These logos are provided for not for profit informational purposes only and should not be considered an endorsement of a brand or product.