Scott Rasak | Blog

It’s that time — and we’re watching not only the beautiful dresses but also the products with prominent cameos. A surprise: None of the makers of the items showcased in the following nominated films paid for placement. Appropriate scene-setting, it seems, trumps economic opportunity. “Brands can add authenticity to the film product,” says Mark Owens, president of product-placement firm Norm Marshall & Associates. So does an Oscar.

Thanks to Gap’s face-plant of a logo revamp, 2010 will go down in the historical ledger as the worst year for brand design since, well, OK, just last year. Still, it’s a damn shame, because the past 12 months have witnessed a raft of branding innovations, from a classed-up packaging concept for Tang to logos that morph across the full spectrum of modern-day media.

Was last week’s redesign of the Starbucks logo an unmitigated disaster (cf. Gap, Tropicana), or a surprisingly canny move? There’s always the hue and cry of the blogosphere to gauge a quick reaction, but for a more measured approach, we have something called science. Professors of marketing at several U.S. universities have been studying the effects of redesign—and on certain types of redesign—on committed and non-committed customers, and what they’ve found suggests that Starbucks might succeed where Gap and Tropicana failed.