Playing Ball With Opus
What’s in a name? You decide.
Nine-year-old Opus Marketing has changed its name, it says, to broaden its focus from an event-marketing shop to an agency that provides creative solutions. Why, then, does it ask us to provide its name solution?
Richmond, VA-based Opus becomes Play, and will sport an “interactive” logo consisting of a red ball and a blank line on which people are encouraged to complete the logo themselves by writing in the word “play.” We envision budget-minded clients who opt to fill in the word “Free” instead.
The name change is “an externalization of an internal belief in collaborative creativity,” says p.r. manager Geofrey Hammond. “The word `play’ represents free thought, boundless ideas.”
But what, pray tell, represents the word “play?”
Opus has coached clients such as Oscar Mayer Foods and Nationwide Mutual Insurance in changing their internal business cultures. This year, the agency helped Woolmark Co. advertise Australian lightweight wool by enlisting models to walk sheep up and down Fifth Avenue.
Along with the name change came the announcement of an IPO, an “Initial Play Offering” that lets visitors to company Web site lookatmorestuff.com register for “shares,” which come in the form of e-mailed news on issues of business creativity.
At least if Play finds it has to change its name again – which it soon might – it won’t have to design a new logo.
