Corporate branding invades your brain

Posted on March 22, 2005 at 12:20 AM

It's interesting to note how branding invades our psyche. If the sinister Madison Avenue ad people do their job right, their clients logo will be branded (pun intended) into our subconscious so well, that by even glimpsing a portion of said logo we will instantly recall their product. I mention this because I ran across a fun exercise called the retail alphabet game a few weeks ago. My first attempt at guessing the logos yielded only a handful of correct answers. But as I later returned to the site, more of the brands started jumping out of my memory. Truly bizarre.

I haven't correctly answered all 26 yet. I figured while driving around or shopping in stores I would easily come up with the rest, but alas I am stuck. As it stands, I have 18 19 20 21 24 out of 26 logos correctly answered. I thought of using Google image search to aid in finding the logos I can't recall. But what do you search for? Logos with red cursive letters? Black and yellow logos? I also looked at brands of the world, but who has the time to sort through tens of thousands of images?

For those of you who's curiosity is so great the letters are beginning to taunt you, the creator of the game Joey Katzen will let you buy a hint or a solution for a nominal fee. Which is hard to believe that people would actually fork over money to figure this thing out. I mean come on Joey, it's just a game. People can't be paying for the answers. There's no way I'd pay for the answer to a letter. (A hint maybe, but definitely not an answer)

Which got me thinking, why not enlist your help in trying to figure out the final 8 7 6 5 2 logos. Listed below you will find those letters of the 4th edition of the retail alphabet game that I do not have so far, along with some of the guesses I have tried. See if you can figure some of these out.

A: Ameritrade? Samsung? A is Saturn

D: Doritos? Budweiser? Dr. Pepper? D is Glad

E: no clue E has been identified as Zales

F: nadda It just came to me, F is Ruffles.

I: Looks like a letter from the Incredibles, but this is retail branding not movie branding. Meineke? Midas? I is Bic

O: I know this one but can't recall it. Looks like part of some donut chain logo, kind of like a saggy donut just dipped into coffee. O is from an old Kinko's logo.

R: I tried Krispy Kreme, but no go. R has correctly been identified as Walgreens.

W: no clue W is Mountain Dew.

If you know the answer to one of the above letters, leave a comment to this post and I will add it to the list. Gmail invites to those who contribute.

Spoiler Alert: The following is a link to an image of my correct answers thus far. If you want to guess the logos on your own, do not click here. (right click on link, and select "save as" to download)

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