Advertising: Sherwin-Williams Wants to Cover Us All with Red Paint

Below is the current Sherwin-Williams logo, which I saw on a giant truck this morning.

Please take a moment to soak it in (pardon the pun).

You don’t need to be a marketing genius to know that most people don’t like to be covered in red paint.

But to claim that your mission/goal/whatever is to “cover the world” with paint — which may or may not contain all kinds of fun and hazardous things — is just plain stupid. (And the “splashing” looks kinda lazy/dangerous/haphazard, too.)

So yes, Sherwin-Williams, if you wanted me to think “God or some big nasty alien is going to douse our planet with goopy, chemical-filled paint and probably destroy us all,” then you’ve got some A-1 branding there.

And for reference, your competitors are a bit smarter about it:

Benjamin Moore has a nice basic logo that means nothing.

Behr has, you guessed it, a bear. Also means nothing except it makes you think of/say the name.

Glidden is neutral. (See Benjamin Moore comment.)

Valspar goes all-copy.

THE BOTTOM LINE: It’s really unwise to show people (and the world), via logo, that you want to cover it with chemicals.