From WTF to TFW - How a Blog Caused a Logo Change for Wisconsin

Earlier this year, one of my favorite blogs, Your Logo Makes Me Barf, wrote a post called WTF Wisconsin? that pointed out a glaring error made by the Wisconsin Tourism Federation. If you don’t know what the acronym WTF stands for, I’ll tell you — “What the fu*k?” Take a look at the logo below.

While it’s surprising that no one within or working with the Wisconsin Tourism Federation mentioned this problem to them, the more interesting point of the story comes from how they learned about it. The power of the blogosphere is demonstrated once again with the WTF Wisconsin? post on Your Logo Makes Me Barf. The Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel wrote about it on the same day in their Hubbub blog.

Perhaps the more unfortunate part of this story though is something mentioned on another of my favorite blogs — Brand New. The organization took the time and invested the money to change their name after realizing the error (the new name is Tourism Federation of Wisconsin), but they just flipped the letters in the logo instead of creating a new one. Now that’s a missed opportunity as this logo leaves a lot to be desired (see below).

Of course, the lesson to learn is — always make sure multiple people review your work. You never know what you might miss.

Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. and Founder & Editor in Chief of an award-winning blog, WomenOnBusiness.com. She is a 25-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored 10 books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing.

Susan Gunelius

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