Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a subtle change to our site, swag, and PowerPoint templates over the last few months. Here’s the evolution as seen in our company coffee mugs:
Far left, the one with the heart, is the current one, but the transition is a funny story.
Our marketing firm, Pixelspoke, first designed the logo on the far right when they came up with the Brent Ozar Unlimited® brand. Their market research said that our customers believed we were “loving commando nurses” – people who parachuted into dangerous territory, guns blazing, and saved people from danger while truly caring about their needs. (Those three words still make me giggle.) Anyway, we loved the logo, and we sent it off to our lawyers for trademarking.
And with a red cross in the middle of the logo, you can guess how that went.
We picked the only logo that is protected by the Geneva Convention. Whoops.
For round two, the designers came up with the middle logo – a white cross in a red circle. This got around the Geneva Convention issues, but between the Swiss flag and Swiss Army knives, our lawyers figured this wasn’t a very good idea either.
We were deeply in love with the pocket, so we went back to Pixelspoke’s talented folks and came up with round 3 – the red heart in the pocket. It manages to convey both medical stuff and our caring nature. We’d originally had another logo in the running with a heart in it, but we had really polarizing opinions about it. The heart does seem a little cheesy, so people either love it or hate it. After we thought about it for a while, we decided we kinda liked the polarizing aspect – after all, we’re kinda polarizing too.
It’ll take us forever to get through all of the little spots around the web where we’ve got the old logo, so if you spot one, let us know. It’s like a treasure hunt, except…the opposite.
If you want one of our mugs, you have two options – either become an employee, or buy one. We’ve got the sales set to the cheapest price possible, and we’re certainly not going into the coffee mug business. I just mention that here because people are going to ask how to get ’em, and no, we’re not giving them away for free. (Except to employees!) Rather than giving away free coffee mugs, we give away free SQL Server training. Enjoy!
11 Comments. Leave new
I have the mug that’s in the middle. I guess it’s a collector’s item now, huh? : )
Absolutely! That’s why I’m keeping mine too, hahaha.
I would’ve kept using the first one until they sent you the, “Cease and desist” order. It would’ve taken awhile to catch up with you. 😉
Yeah, but the problem is that when you get a cease & desist, it has to happen fast. It takes a long, long time to design a new logo, get your printed materials done, change your web presences, etc. I’d rather that happen on our schedule rather than a forced one, heh.
I can think of another way to get a mug. Unfortunately, that would most likely result in B&E charges, so I guess I’ll go with Zazzle…
This makes me sad that I don’t drink coffee. Does it come in pints?
Who needs a mug when you can get SQL training for free? Happy Holidays
I know you said you weren’t giving away free mugs, but how about a free mug to the first person who spots an occurrence of an logo on the website?
Ha! I admire your zeal, but we’d go broke immediately. 😀 It’ll take us months to track down all of the locations – we’ve got a part-time office admin, and that’s one of her job duties after she works through a few other more urgent tasks.
Imagine if you used a green cross you’d have the road safety guy on your case, bad news in England as that guy is Darth Vader, I’d take getting sued over a force choke, also for Andrew I think Zazzle do a beer mug!
We’re sorry this product is no longer available. Visit SQLCruise to see available products.
Lucky me, already got one 🙂