Hospitality Business Management: - College of Business ...

ig-name, national companies that
one might assume would know
better—don’t always do enough
research when creating or redesigning
the images that represent them.
“Where they sometimes really miss
the mark is in their mark, in their
logos,” she says.
The telecommunications company
AT&T, for example, recently changed
its highly recognizable, all-capital-letter
logo and blue-and-white-striped
circle to more informal, thinner,
lowercase letters next to a sphere that
looks like a bouncing ball.
“AT&T has wanted to look like
they’re more approachable,” Henderson
says. The new logo “is definitely
more approachable, but where they
fall short is that they don’t know how
multidimensional their font is.”
That is, the fonts that companies
choose in their marketing can convey
different messages: confidence,
distrust, pleasure, reassurance,
strength, coldness, and more. AT&T’s
prior font was bold, giving it a feeling
of strength and stability, while the
new font is thinner and more casual.
In April 2005, Henderson published
an article in the Harvard Business
Review that advises marketers to
consider the messages sent—either
intentionally or not—by their
typeface. Henderson, along with CB
professors Joan Giese and Joseph
Cote, studied 210 typefaces.
Fonts that subjects considered
warm, attractive, likable, and feminine
include AncientScript, Enviro,
and Informal Roman. The downside
of using those fonts is that they aren’t
especially strong or reassuring.
Fonts that might be effective in an
edgy marketing campaign because
they’re considered interesting,
emotional, exciting, and innovative
are Chiller, Stonehenge, and Paintbrush.
A business trying to convey
feelings of assurance and strength,
such as a bank, might want to avoid
using those fonts since study subjects
felt those options were unsettling and
unfamiliar, Henderson says.
The third group includes Playbill,
Onyx, and StencilSet, fonts that
were called cold, unattractive, and
unemotional by the study subjects.
So should marketers avoid those
unfriendly typefaces altogether?
“These typefaces aren’t useless,”
Henderson says in the article. “Companies
might, for example, use them
to display characteristics or claims
of a countercultural or competing
brand.”
Advertising Scholar Receives
Lifetime Achievement Award
The article goes on to identify
strong, masculine fonts, such as
NewYorkDeco and Fisherman;
interesting and emotional—yet
dishonest—fonts, such as BigDaddy
and Ransom; and commonly used
fonts that project stability, such as
Georgia and Times New Roman.
Darrel Muehling, professor and chair of the Department
of Marketing, was honored with a lifetime
achievement award for outstanding contribution to
advertising research from the American Academy of
Advertising (AAA) in March.
Only 14 people have received this award since the
AAA was founded in 1958. The Academy publishes
the Journal of Advertising and serves the industry by
strengthening advertising research and education.
According to the AAA, “Darrel has made major
contributions to advertising research over his career, including several best paper
awards at leading journals like the Journal of Advertising. Darrel is past president
of AAA and has been cited as one of the most frequent contributors to the top
journals of our field.”
“I have always been interested in why or how advertising works,” says
Muehling. He teaches a class on the principles of marketing for juniors, and
a senior-level promotions management course that provides a text and case
approach to integrating promotion into the marketing plan by examining
methods, organization, communications, media selection, and campaigns.
After earning his bachelor of science, bachelor of arts, master’s, and doctorate
degrees from the University of Nebraska, Muehling joined the WSU marketing
faculty in 1985. He became an associate professor with tenure in 1991, and full
professor in 1997, the same year he assumed leadership of the department. He
has developed courses for distance degree students, was a visiting professor at
Thammasat University and Prince of Songkla University in Thailand, and has
served on numerous university, college, and industry committees.
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