I've just downloaded Skype's Brand Book, which they've recently made public on their site. It's a nice piece of work, and offers a rich, flexible and humorous set of guidelines for the use of Skype's brand elements. They allow for unique cloud designs (see above) and generally shy away from the typical rigidity you typically see in these documents. It appears that they've enjoyed making this document. It's funny, and it's clearly been written by someone with a command, nay, a flair for the English language. When I see something like this, I take a big deep breath of awesome and start to feel good about the future of marketing.
Even better: the international bits. Sure, they're clichéd, but at least they've made some illustrations for each country. Do all companies do this? I can't imagine they do.
And they've got some "Straplines" for each language. I like (a) the word strapline and (2) that they're not all translated from the English line, "Take a deep breath." In fact, they've chosen a much simpler line, "Let's talk," which seems to be much more adaptable for different dialects. And in addition to defining the tools of the trade (logos, graphic elements, taglines, etc.), they've built a whole additional book about how to talk to people.
It's quite nice. Here are some captures that I liked.
I like that they say to do things. That would make me feel good if I worked at Skype.
These are words they like. The words they don't like are: Telephony; Corporation; VoIP; Peer-to-peer; Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious. Ha.
More about doing! And sharing. Yay. More deep breaths of awesome.
And some bits on how to talk to people about Skype. You know, if people ask you about it on your Facebook profile, or if you're responding to a comment on a blog, or whatever. In short, I like this.
It's a nice tool for people who are visually and verbally defining the brand--allowing them flexibility to do what they think is best--and for those defining it through actions on the social web. It doesn't pretend to define in absolute terms how people will talk about Skype, but rather the general feeling people should have after such a conversation. And that's nice.
