“Full service” agency Mindshare have launched a re-brand this week and are taking flak for an unnecessary and expensive redesign. This wouldn’t be at all unusual but in this case the criticism is coming from other West End agency chiefs rather than those of us in the trenches who boggle at spending quarter of a million on a couple of coloured circles.

We’re used to statements such as “The flow of colour symbolises the flow of creativity across the business and the segmentation mirrors the bringing together of specialist expertise within Mindshare’s ‘open source’ approach to client business which enhances a platform neutral approach” being applauded by brand pseuds, but when the people you share Cristal and a certain other C product are laying into you with comments like “I am really struggling to see the point of this” you know you’ve had your nose in the trough a bit too much.

Still, we’re used to seeing this kind of nonsense and wouldn’t pass comment if it weren’t for the fact that Mindshare recently launched an SEO division, headed up by Carolyn Watt who commented “It’s no longer about building a site or technology, it’s about positioning brands in the digital space”. Well sorry Carolyn, but there’s still some elements of building a site that are important for SEO, and not replacing your entire website with a single GIF is one of them.

Does Mindshare’s SEO division have any voice in the company, or was this done with their blessing? Either way it’s hardly what you’d call best practice (though probably no worse than their previous flash based site) and goes to show that big brand agencies aren’t always the best choice when it comes to specialist services.

In the interests of fairness and balance I did try and find out some more about their SEO services on their other website, www.mindshareworld.com, but gave up the fourth time I got an internal server error.