The Great Palma Logo Experience

It began as a simple birthday gift. My son, a D&AD Yellow Pencil award-winning copywriter based in New York City sent me some mock family crests. We didn't know what to do with them, but they looked pretty cool. We finally decided they'd look good on plastic cups at our family's summer home in Sag Harbor.

It never occurred to me that it could also work as a "logo" for my business. The Palma Group never really had an official logo. The Palma Group is essentially me, a guy known as "Palma" to my network -- a fairly robust and creative network at that. The Palma Group does a few things, all creative in nature. I'm not sure why I would suddenly need a logo after 30 years in the advertising business -- after 1,300 creative placements and $400 million in revenue to my agency clients. But, what the hell, we're all sitting around with nothing else to do but screw around on LinkedIn and Facebook.

So I put up one of the "crests" on LinkedIn and Facebook two days ago (April 15). What has ensued over the past 40 hours is interesting. Here are some stats:

• 8,868 views (this number has grown by 234 since I began writing this article, and I'm sure it will pass 10,000 by lunchtime)
• 28 views from an A-List ad agency
• 15 views at The Coca-Cola Company
• 13 views from Apple in Cupertino, CA
• 12 views from Google in Mountain View, CA
• 704 views from New York City
• 696 views from Atlanta
• 231 views from Los Angeles
• 221 views from Nashville
• 596 views from Designers

The mock "crests" were satirical in nature -- a play on the Corleone family "Sicilian thing." The minuscule lettering within the image reads "la famiglia di palma." I thought that was a different way of communicating the word "group" -- famiglia. But overall I thought the images were stylish, elegant and interesting -- three qualities I sorely lack. I loved the colors -- the cream backdrop. It could work as a sticker on butcher paper wrapped around a pound of soppressata. That's the feel I was going for. If I ever own a deli -- I'm all set.

Of the 54 comments, most were complimentary. A few hacks took it seriously and weighed in snarkily. But haters will always hate. Thanks for playing along with me. Oh, here are the other two crests: