Serbian Railways (Re)Branding Dissaster

Today I am going to look at the other side of M-Factor of the Week coin. Namely I am going to introduce remarkable and epic failure of state-owned railway operator in Serbia, which came up as with newly introduced name - Srbija voz. a.d.

Several reasons led me to dedicate this article today to this "branding" lesson. Obviously the incredible level of nepotism and pure professionalism among marketing gurus in state funded enterprises combined led to all this mess, and lesson to learn.

First of all, huge majority of the population is not even aware of name transition of a given company, which was previously widely known as Zeleznice Srbije a.d.  Misstep number one.

Secondly, official web-site is much more eye-catchy comparing it with old one which was probably made and updated via MS Word. Saying this without a word of sarcasm, unfortunately. But, several setbacks are very much visible on first sight. Only available language is Serbian, cyrillic. No reservations or purchase possible online (should we mention that we are fully in 17th year of 21st century?) etc. These are serious problems.

And something I even got upset on. Those are the amazingly poor graphics and logo that are being introduced. And by saying this, I really do my best to stay polite, concise and comprehensive. The official logo of newly introduced company looks like this:

Yes, this is the only resolution available online. Even with basics of the basic Paint, way better logo could be made. If not, employ someone who knows e.g. GreenDesing. Anyway, how do you like this graphical "solution" that should go in line with all graphical and branding logic in 21st century?

To make the things even worse, the group of freelancers offered their graphics completely free of charge.  Full reference here.

All in all, I could keep listing numerous reasons which would support today's somewhat aggressive title. It is literally out of question that cases like this should be legally penalized.

I used this chance and article to stand up against this ridiculous "practices" that are very common in Serbian companies (primarily state-owned). If you agree in any extent please share this article and hopefully any kind of result will come up in the future.

Thanks for reading and your thoughts.

For more interesting marketing stories visit M-Factor | Balkan Marketing Stories