Take a deep breath: Skype tweaks their winning brand
Have you noticed Skype "growing up" its look? It's been gradual, introduced in some of this winter's local calling promotions. Co-marketing partners were told to fold new design guidelines into packaging, merchandising, and tradeshow art in the last week.
Skype's brand ranked seventh worldwide (in one unscientific study), beating out Ikea, Coca Cola and (gasp) eBay. But in the US and Canada, neither Skype nor eBay make the top ten. Skype hasn't ever made the US+Canada Brand Channel Readers' Choice rankings.
Skype needed to tinker with their winning brand. 
Skype is bigger at three years' old, more corporate, walks among telecom titans. Skype is also positioning itself for the workplace and the United States. It's natural to nudge the still young brand away from the adolescent.
Skype leaves behind two visual elements from its marketing palette and adds two.
Skype is losing Akbar, the handwriting font inspired by The Simpsons cartoon. They are also retiring Skype's colorful dialog bubbles.
Skype is keeping white space, its color palette and the clean, modern, sans-serif Chalet Book typeface, developed by Rene Albert Chalét.
Skype adds clouds and line drawings of skylines, sounds, and exuberance carved into or growing from those clouds.
Beyond looks, Skype's tagline is changing to "Take a deep breath." This inches the brand away from low cost toward value add. What do you do with your saved money? Talk more, and more freely. It also emphasizes the conversation more than the network carrying it. I like this clever and appropriate reframing.
Technorati tags: skype, ebay, ebayinc, brand, brands, marketing, markets, marcom, advertising, promotion, clouds, akbar, simpsons, chalet book, chaletbook, font, fonts, type, typefaces, voip, tagline, takeadeepbreath
Comments
That "Take a Deep Breath" tag (or whatever) certainly confuses my firewall and me, trying to determine whether "Take a Deep Breath" is some scary Trojan or phony phishing tactic to induce me to set my firewall to allow this access or to act as a server. Not knowing what this is all about, I disabled. Now I got to go back and see what I can undo. Not a good idea of Skype not to explain this.
Posted by: Chip | April 25, 2007 03:46 PM
Chip is absolutely correct. I have the same experience and also killed it! What were Skype thinking!
Posted by: Anthony | September 4, 2007 01:34 PM
How do I kill the message that continues to pop-up on my screen which I either must allow or block? I really don't need the constant question that I have to address repeatedly.
Thanks for your help.
Posted by: Harold | September 6, 2007 04:58 AM
I have the same question as Harold on Sep 6 ... wish there was an answer posted?? So what do we do with that message??
Posted by: Judith Rizk | December 13, 2007 04:08 AM
@Judith, Harold. We'd love to help you out but I am not experiencing any
"pop-up behavior". What URL or web page triggers the pop-up? A little difficult to help when we don't have a more complete description of the problem.
Posted by: Jim Courtney | December 13, 2007 08:03 PM
The window requesting a 'block' or 'don't block' action pops up only when I reboot my machine - which is enough to be annoying.
So far I've hit the 'remind me later' while I wait to learn more about this '... take a deep breath' issue (which, by the way, adds little to nothing to the Skype experience - except, of course, confusion.)
I beg to differ with Phil Wolff, as I do not consider this 'tag' to be a 'tweak', nor this so called 'reframing' of any significance to the users.
'Sykpe' short and simple, all by itself, was just fine.
I agree with those who think it strange that Skype failed to notify it's users of this new 'tag'.
Did some marketing exec bypass the tech people?
Posted by: Jeannine Brewer | April 10, 2008 03:44 AM
The window requesting a 'block' or 'don't block' action pops up only when I reboot my machine - which is enough to be annoying.
So far I've hit the 'remind me later' while I wait to learn more about this '... take a deep breath' issue (which, by the way, adds little to nothing to the Skype experience - except, of course, confusion.)
I beg to differ with Phil Wolff, as I do not consider this 'tag' to be a 'tweak', nor this so called 'reframing' of any significance to the users.
'Sykpe' short and simple, all by itself, was just fine.
I agree with those who think it strange that Skype failed to notify it's users of this new 'tag'.
Did some marketing exec bypass the tech people?
Posted by: Jeannine Brewer | April 10, 2008 03:44 AM