Over 60,000 people flocked to the Mashup Challenge entry since Saturday, which was certainly helped along by being at the top of Reddit and on Digg at overlapping times, so thanks to everybody for digging, submitting, linking, commenting, and reading. On to the good news!
As of yesterday, the logo is gone! I don’t know if it’s down permanently or whether they’re removing it from their ad campaigns, but I think this is definitely something for everybody to be happy about. A few emails were sent on my part to their legal team (no response yet however) but I think the biggest force in this situation had to be the community uprising that everyone participated in, and for that I thank all of you. One of the things that companies don’t realize is the power of blogs, and that’s evident via a quick Google search for Meridian Communications — my friend Nathan Smith’s entry about what happened comes up pretty close to the top. The next time a potential client researches their firm, they might actually end up reading about this entire situation and maybe thinking twice.
I don’t know what legal or logistical steps were involved in removing it from the website, but I want to personally thank the people at Meridian Communications for listening to some random designer’s email pleas. I don’t have a legal team, I don’t have a fancy office, and I sure as hell don’t have (or want!) gigantic multi-national companies as clients, but I do have email, I do have my blog, and I do have 9rules, and I think the combination of those three is pretty darn powerful.
Oh, yeah! The Contest!
The winner of the gift certificate was to be randomly selected today, and — *randomly selects the number 26 in his head* — the 26th commenter, Dave Anderson, wins! He had a great entry with the Toyota logo turned into a pair of vibrating speakers…. great job!
As for my Top 5 favorite submissions, that was a bit tougher, but I managed to pull together a list of my favorites in no particular order:
- Francois’ CEO lettermark
- John B.’s Yota’s Siesta
- Wardini’s MS Paint Snake
- xmpcray’s Awesome Osama
- Phillips’ To… Yoda and Peeter’s Froyoda!
Congrats everybody!
About Mike Rundle
That’s incredible, and im sure with the many mentions and traffic related to their name, ‘meridian communications’, that search engines will start pushing more of the articles towards the top.
Not a very wise move by them – but I am glad all is settled.
Mike: One thing is for sure – Meridian Communications now fully understands the influence of “viral marketing.” Aka – Now they have seen the true powah of this fully operational battle station!
That’s a nice little resolution. Congratulations to the contest winner!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If the dev team lacked creative talent, they were going to copy someone, but hey, they chose 9rules. Cool.
Congrats to all the winners! Also good to hear a resolution has been sorted…
Great to know that that fiasco has been taken care of. I wonder what’ll happen to the designer and CD (if there was one) who approved the logo… dun dun dun.
Anyways, just a great example of how blogs affect the direction of social thinking these days.
PS. Congrats to the participants of the contest… I had a great time viewing them =p
I’m sure it’s just coincidental, but I find it interesting that the president’s profile has been pulled from the Meridian site. Did a head potentially roll due to this whole thing? I don’t know, but my mind did tend to wander in that direction.
The current page (nada, zip, nothing, picture is a broken image)
http://www.meridiancomm.com/team.php?teammem=john
The cached page from mid-September
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:z_oPKOVmsJ8J:www.meridiancomm.com/team.php%3Fteammem%3Djohn+meridiancomm+team+john&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
I don’t remember the broken image being there a few days ago, but I could just trying to add more intrigue to the situation now that the logo has been pulled.
Nice! Congrats to all the winners!!