Thursday, April 03, 2008

Same same, but different

Oh man, what a classic.


I noticed this old tractor, which I had never heard of before, while riding my bike in Tokai. It's called a SAME. Which marketing genius named this product? How about a name like Atlas or Titan rather. But the real surprise came when I found the logo on the front of the tractor was different to the logo on the side of the tractor. Same same, but different.

Its a marketing nightmare, but it made me smile. These days brands which are trying to be new or fashionable reset their logo in different typefaces so that it can be slapped on a tee shirt in an attempt for mass appeal. Billabong comes to mind. But then so many others do too. And now we have low price copycat brands like the Mr Price Red clothing label flooding the market with homogeneous tee shirt graphics that look like Billabong or Volcom. I wonder who copied who first.

Maybe these guys were way ahead of the game. This tractor is easy 20 years old.

Maybe all brands are the same, and its just the budgets that are different.