I think everyone will agree that most cultural artefacts are mediocre. Go ahead, call me a snob. But in my experience, the human imagination is far more likely to produce a strip mall than a Piazza San Marco. That would explain why there’s only one Piazza San Marco, and tens of thousands of the other thing.

The only good news about a mediocre artefact is that it is quickly forgotten. But a bad artefact? Well that’s another question. I recall a campaign for Pepto Bismol a few years back that almost turned my stomach. Remember the candy-coated pink hamburgers and french fries? That art director was apparently unfamiliar with the concept of taste appeal. Or taste period.

This year’s bad artefact is, appropriately enough, a dog. I am referring to the Fido campaign with the doggie masks.

Building a brand around a central metaphor requires a theme that is broad enough to support endless variations, and a creative team with enough restraint to resist ham-fisted interpretation. Sadly, both of these assets are absent in the case of Fido’s recent campaign. This is what my Grade 11 English teacher would have referred to as an example of pathos.

Design is certainly no stranger to this unforgiving landscape. Take a venerable brand like Jeep. The original SUV seems to have lost some of its self-assurance. Now that absolutely everyone – from Cadillac to Hyundai – has their own version of a Jeep, Jeep has felt the need to signal a heightened sense of heritage. So it has redesigned its logo to include a reference to its signature front end.

Like Coke, it is leveraging its distinctive packaging in an attempt to remind everyone of its first mover status. It works for Coke, because the bottle is not only unique but elegant. But Jeep’s front end has always had a blunt utilitarianism about it, and blunt utilitarianism is an attribute shared by all SUVs – with the laughable exception of Lexus, Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac. So it may not be an effective differentiator. Not a typography-friendly shape either. They shoulda stuck with the wordmark.

The best and the worst

As for the best and worst strategies of the year, I’ll start with the worst: PricewaterhouseCoopers’ decision to rename itself Monday. By what perverse logic would anyone arrive at the conclusion that Monday is a day of freshness and energy, and therefore a good name for a global consulting firm, when most of the C-suites they serve were wishing every day was Friday? It had the same sense of impending doom as the name marchfirst.

The best strategy? For IBM to buy PWC and flush Monday down the toilet. No surprise IBM is rated as the world’s third most valuable brand, at US$51 billion. What a long way they’ve come from building typewriters.

Will Novosedlik is a brand strategist at TAXI Advertising and Design in Toronto.