05-07-2025
The depressing proof that our political class is obsessed with style over substance
It could be the most expensive full stop of all time. One round dot, albeit now painted turquoise and no longer sitting on the line but nudged up halfway between the words 'Gov' and 'UK'.
It's the work of advertising agency M+C Saatchi, that once great creative company responsible for the likes of Heineken ads, for recruiting to MI6 and their 'Back the Bid' campaign that helped London win the 2012 Olympic Games. Well they're now reduced to fiddling with full stops on logos.
And it's not like they even changed the font, although, when not printed in black and white there is an iteration in colour of a blue background.
For this work, this tweak, came their invoice: £532,000. Let's hope that's including VAT but there was a further £99,950 spent by Leicester-based marketing agency Lnet Digital for conducting market research on the logo changes.
And there was more related work still, this time by civil servants who produced a 150-page document explaining how the rebrand should be used. It contains the following priceless poetry:
'Our dot is the bridge between the government and the UK, by the side of users to help make information and services easier and more useful. Used within our wordmark and as a graphic device across all channels, the dot is a guiding hand, for life.'
Consider that vignette when you wonder why your bins can't be collected more regularly, your new passport delivered sooner, the trains running on time.
Because, clearly in Whitehall, what's more fun is to muse on the benevolent power of a dot and how it is like a collective hand across the nation, joining us in a heavenly and warming embrace with government – not to do all the dross that might actually help to get the country moving.
Except that if you, on your computer, actually try to put the dot halfway up the line your laptop will start smoking, such is the impossibility. And if you managed this remarkable miracle, it wouldn't help you because in actuality, the dot needs to remain exactly where it was before in order to get you to the website.
