Enjoy the new look – because you’re paying for it

GREAT news on Thursday.

Received an email from my gas provider.

It was personally addressed to me in the inbox and I opened it with barely bridled excitement.

What could this missive be holding?

What was I going to find out about my preferred supplier for very expensive energy vapour?

“Hello,” it began. So personal and chirpy. Or was it cold and businesslike. I wasn’t sure. I leaned toward chirpy and read on with a mildly dented enthusiasm.

“First up, thanks for being an AGL customer.”

That was sweet. Wasn’t it? It’s nice to be thanked for pretty much anything these days.

We live in a self-centred-postthanks-world, so “first up”, a thanks seemed to be a pretty good start.

This email was looking up. Leading me to believe there may be a bonus involved for a loyal customer.

Some perky announcement that prices were dropping, some reassurance that our gas was not going to be sold offshore.

Then the big news arrived in the second sentence.

“You might have noticed that we’ve changed our logo.” That floored me. I felt like a terrible customer. Overcome with guilt and embarrassment.

Truth be told, I had not noticed the change in the logo.

How could I have been so careless?

And so with a palpable sense of “woe is me” entwined with “please forgive me”, I glanced to the top of the email and yes ... the graphic design was a little different.

It appeared to look like a gas burner. A blue flamer.

This was not exactly breaking the bank of innovation, but I can’t recall what the previous one looked like.

Perhaps it was a house brick or something unconventional?

Perhaps this is why the gas company decided they needed to write to me and tell them they had spent my money on changing their logo to look more like a gas company? We may never know. But the change had been made and I knew they wanted me to know about the new journey into graphic literalism that we would soon be sharing together because the next sentence said:

“We wanted to let you know about this change and that you can expect to see this logo on future bills and other communications from us. Our new logo is now on our website ... Again, thanks for being with us.”

Signed by the general manager of sales and marketing. I shot back a quick reply. “Congratulations on the new logo. It looks great. Can you tell me who designed it and how much did it cost?” Within minutes I received a reply: “Delivery status notification. (Failure) Address not found.”

I was briefly confused by the “talk to the hand — no reply approach” to customer dialogue. Then it hit me. They don’t care. They just wanted to create an electronic paper trail so they can say ... “There is no confusion.”

The customer pays and pays. Rebranding a utility must run to six figures. Easy.

That cost must be coming out of our next gas bill.

There is no such thing as a free logo. Ross Mueller is a freelance writer and director.