Metropol

Primark have rebranded:
https://www.creativeboom.com/news/prima ... rand-look/

Was there actually any point in changing the logo?

AGuyFromUpNorth wrote: Mon 20 May, 2024 21.37 And speaking of ASDA, they've also recently changed their in-store ASDA radio. They don't play 'proper' songs anymore, just random 'license-free' style music like what Matalan, B&Q, etc. play.

Do they, I completely failed to notice that when I've been in there recently. Whereas whenever I went to B&Q, the "aural uncanny valley" nature of the cover versions used to drive me nuts (though I'm sure they went back to proper music a few years back). Earlier this year I was in the Hobbycraft in Dundee and was tortured by an awful cover of Into The Groove! Unless you mean they're not bad covers, but just bizarre original music, like the old fashioned muzak or the in-house stuff we get on the Brookside repeats, which might explain why I haven't clocked on, just assumed it was modern music I wasn't familiar with.

I remember in the 90s when Asda FM used to always play Let's Get Ready to Rhumble at 4PM every day! That went on for years, maybe even into the early 00s.

Also reminds me of when my ice rink went through a period of using the same royalty free bad covers CD for months on end- was a strange thing where all the tracks merged into each other as one 60 minutes long piece, and as the skating sessions was 2 hours, I had to hear the entire thing twice each week (and the changing of "kissing my ass" to "having a blast" on their version of Get The Party Started made me want to scream every time). Was almost a relief when they changed to a different CD, even if it was still bad covers... but then that stuck for months too. Thankfully they went back to using proper music again (though they have still at times used the same CD for weeks on end, and the same songs in the same order every week still drives you nuts even if it is the proper versions- thankfully it's been a while since that happened).

AGuyFromUpNorth wrote: Tue 21 May, 2024 19.33 Primark have rebranded:
https://www.creativeboom.com/news/prima ... rand-look/

Was there actually any point in changing the logo?

It reminds me of the Sky 2008ish logo change, in that it's such a subtle change you end up wondering why they even bothered.

The mention of in-store music reminds me of M&S going in the other direction, having Status Quo produce "Saving All Over The Store".

It was quite surreal to hear it playing in the shop when I'd seen nothing about the song being produced.

I was in Asda the other week and it still amuses me when the DJ says something like "well I'll be back at the same time tomorrow", as if people schedule their shops around what shows are on Asda Radio

Until recently you could stream it online, so I guess saying something like that could have been aimed at anyone who listened that way (if anyone did!), but I can't find a stream any more, not one that works anyway.

It's not cover versions that ASDA are using (thankfully), it's just one of those royalty-free playlists designed for retailers like this one:

https://player.songtradr.com/home

They still have the ASDA FM DJ's, but it seems to be pre-recorded stuff and they never actually mention the artists' names or songs titles.

And speaking of weird lyric changes / song edits, Superdrug's radio seems to have some really choppy ones. Often they seem to completely cut out anything that the deem 'too inappropriate' (eg. removing words like damn, hell, etc.) and it really messes with the beat of the songs.

I've just been into Asda, there were more adverts than music! And the new slogan was there.

I still wouldn't have picked up on the fact it's all no name music if I hadn't been told, though that's at least partly because I know so little about modern music, though I imagine people not really noticing is what they're hoping for. It doesn't stand out in the way that bad cover versions do, so it fades into the background. Christmas will probably be the time it's most noticable they're not using licenced music and people aren't hearing their usual dose of Slade, Wham, Mariah etc.

Though a massive company like Asda becoming too cheap to pay to licence proper music (after decades of Asda FM and the music being a major part of their stores) really does seem ridiculous.

AGuyFromUpNorth wrote: Mon 20 May, 2024 22.09 I was just thinking about this - it seems such an odd decision. So now we are either going to see tons of stores with old branding, or they are going to pull a Morrisons and rip down all those signs after only a year or two and replace them...

It wouldn't be so bad but the old branding feels very 'formal' whereas then new branding is quite 'playful' in my opinion. The two don't really go together at all so I'd imagine a half-hearted rebrand would look really off.

Surely they'd just keep the same signage outside? Just looks the same as the current one to me bar the new tagline.

Speaking of Morrisons, they seem to have a rebrand every other month lately. It feels like every store in the North East has a different interior as they keep changing it over and over again, even the current refurbs are different to each other with some getting done properly and other's being a botch job as an understatement. Right mess.

Zimba wrote: Fri 24 May, 2024 00.12 Speaking of Morrisons, they seem to have a rebrand every other month lately. It feels like every store in the North East has a different interior as they keep changing it over and over again, even the current refurbs are different to each other with some getting done properly and other's being a botch job as an understatement. Right mess.

On the plus side, stores seem to have been sent signage for their (bizarre) little seating areas dotted around the stores now, rather than the home-made stuff each store was bodging together.

These random seats have clearly come from a “what zero-cost thing can we do?” meeting. I was ready to say I’ve not yet seen anyone actually use them, but I’ve just had a trip there and saw a fella taking a seat near the cheese counter. So that’s nice.

Zimba wrote: Fri 24 May, 2024 00.12

AGuyFromUpNorth wrote: Mon 20 May, 2024 22.09 I was just thinking about this - it seems such an odd decision. So now we are either going to see tons of stores with old branding, or they are going to pull a Morrisons and rip down all those signs after only a year or two and replace them...

It wouldn't be so bad but the old branding feels very 'formal' whereas then new branding is quite 'playful' in my opinion. The two don't really go together at all so I'd imagine a half-hearted rebrand would look really off.

Surely they'd just keep the same signage outside? Just looks the same as the current one to me bar the new tagline.

Speaking of Morrisons, they seem to have a rebrand every other month lately. It feels like every store in the North East has a different interior as they keep changing it over and over again, even the current refurbs are different to each other with some getting done properly and other's being a botch job as an understatement. Right mess.

The Morrisons interiors are indeed a mess. Over the past 10 years or so, we've had around 4-5 different variations of the Market Street signage. In around 2020, it seems they tried to correct this by fitting new bulkhead signage across (almost) all stores, which in fact was made of cardboard and just slapped right over the top of the old signage, only to reverse their decision and go back to using the old-style signs in the newly refitted stores!!

They have also started removing the 'since 1899' bit from under the exterior signs to match the new logo. It looks really odd though as there's just the brackets there now with nothing attached to them.