In the true SDMB spirit of looking up factual answers to questions meant rhetorically, if at all:
It being a regional brand until fairly recently, though, it may well be that non-Midwesterners are not used to seeing it.
Jeez… time for a new logo anyone? I’m game.
Sherwin-Williams Paint
“Paint all the things that only need paint on earth, which isn’t too much so don’t freak out”
Of course they want to cover the world in paint. Their shitty wallpaper peels off the wall after three weeks.
Mrs. Bubbadog wanted to nuke our local SW store after wasting three more days stripping the crappy wall paper from the wall. The SW rep’s response," Yeah, we’ve had a lot of trouble with that kind of wallpaper lately." At that point Bubbadog had to constrain the rampant Mrs. from covering the SW store in RED.
Since then, we don’t buy ** anything ** from them.
He must have clicked on the option that disables similies.
Oh, just so you know, Colonel Sanders’ head isn’t really that big, and isn’t (well, wasn’t while he was still alive anyway) detached from his body. 
I for one had the exact same reaction when I saw the ad a few years ago.
I saw it for the first time a couple of months ago, and it kinda creeped me out. But then I forgot about it until just now.
Y’know, I used to work at KFC ('twas a looong time ago; my first job), and it always used to bug me a little that you couldn’t go anywhere in that store without a portrait of that dead Colonel staring at you. From the damn ketchup packets, even, and as a subtle watermark on the napkins.
Creepy as all hell.
I’ve known about the Sherwin-Williams logo for at least three decades (it’s been sold here in the Northwest probably longer than that) and it’s always bothered my ecological sensibilities. Sure, cover the planet in chemical-laden, probably nonbiodegradable gunk. Kill all the animals, plants and people and all that so the company can make a buck. That makes a lot of sense.
But hey, they’ve been around a lot longer than I have and they’ve been pretty lax on this Paint the World thing. I look around and other than buildings and vehicles, things seem pleasantly and safely non-painted. The trees are naturally green and the fishies are swimming aroung in non-pigmented water so I guess I don’t have to worry about much if they’ve only gotten as far as they have in the last 100 years or so.
But just in case, where can I get about a million gallons of ecologically sound paint remover in short order?
CLEVELAND— Sherwin-Williams officials announced Monday that the company is nearing the midpoint of its 112-year project to cover the Earth in a coat of bright red paint. “We’re proud to announce that the entire Northern Hemisphere should be slathered 10 feet deep in candy-apple red Latex Semi-Gloss by year’s end,” Sherwin-Williams CEO Christopher Connor said. “And we are fully confident that the rest of the globe can be completed well before the giant space bucket runs out of paint.” For the more difficult second-phase painting of the Earth’s underside, workmen equipped with spray hoses will be suspended by cables from the equator.
From a July 2002 Onion, though I couldn’t find the original article.
From a purely aesthetic POV, it is a bad logo and slogan; really really bad.
It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t like to paint it.
On a par with a bakery saying “Choke to death on our lovely cakes”
Isn’t Dead Colonels that movie where people dress up like Kentucky Colonels and rob KFCs of their 17 herbs and spices?
I think it got a bad rap because they were all in whiteface.
They seem to have a knack for weird / stupid ads. A while ago around here they were running a TV ad that blared some chick singing “Ask how, ask now, ask Sherwin-Williams” about a zillion times per ad.
And every damn time she ran the “ask” and “how” together so it sounded like “Ask Cow, ask now…”
I’ve seen the Sherwin-Williams logo for years in Iowa. It actually bothers me less than the one for Dutch Boy paint, showing a kid in overalls and wooden shoes painting a wall. Child labor and stereotypes, anyone?
And how about the ecological damage wrought by that little girl on the Morton Salt carton? C’mon kid, that’s what the Romans did when they destroyed a city.
And the kiddy porn shot in the Coppertone suntan lotion ads - they wouldn’t be able to show a little girls’ nekkid butt if that logo wasn’t grandfathered somehow. Come to think of it, that one actually does bother me.
They still run those?