Are You a “Logo Cop”? Hand in Your Badge

What’s going on with logos?  Starbucks releases a new coffee and colors the logo gold instead of green in its television ads.  Google changes its logo every day.  There seems to be hundreds of different blue Twitter birds.

There was a day when every logo had strict brand standards.  One of the joys seemed to be monitoring and flagging people for logo violations.  But now that kind of thinking is disappearing, just like CDs, newspapers and watches. Please don’t get me wrong, we still need to have logo standards, but this new media, content-driven world is changing the logo cop into a logo artist.

It’s time to hand in your badge and get out your creativity cap.  Google has made its logo a place to check every day to see what creative way they have connected their logo to current events.  Does it matter it is a different color, size or even if the logo is readable?  No.  Yet it is an incredibly strong brand.  Nike is selling hundreds of shirts with its swoosh in a Spirograph-like design.  The logo is upside down, sideways and facing the wrong way.  Does it matter? Not at $45 per T-shirt.

Purist will yell foul.  But in this “sharing” world, icons with creative treatments that just represent a logo seem to enfranchise and brand an organization more positively.  In other words, the less stringent, the more powerful.  I’m typing this in Word on an Apple computer.  The Word logo doesn’t look like anything Microsoft puts out, but I know exactly what it is.  You have to change your logo to work with new technology—not every logo woks on a billboard and an iPhone app.

That leads me to think that the new logo design should be creatively exciting, flexible (like Twitter’s blue bird) and simple (so it is easily identified in any use).

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How Important Is a Logo?

Have you considered changing or updating your logo?  If you have, you can change your logo but one thing you can’t change is the new way you need to roll out your new logo.  Changing your logo will definitely change how you view social media.

Gap tried to change its logo it had been using for more than 20 years.  In just one week, Gap rolled out its new logo, then Gap experienced a social media backlash, then Gap asked people to submit their own logos which flopped and then Gap finally switched back to its old logo.

Starbucks changed its logo at about the same time, but Starbucks successfully made the transition.  Both had a lot of social media discussion, but according to Advertising Age, 40% of the Gap social media discussion happened through blogs.  It is the
intensity of the message that counts.

Instead of the typical push-out marketing effort, introducing a new logo may need more of a soft, social media-driven effort.  Engaging in a dialogue with stakeholders early may keep you from having a “gap” between your new look and how your stakeholders see you.

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Why Did the Y Change its logo?

The local YMCA has a marketing problem.  The national organization has decided to change the logo.

The problem?  The local Y tried to enfranchise the old logo into the building and did a really great job.  It will cost thousands to replace the old logo and incorporate the new one.  The national organization is giving the local YMCAs five years to make the transition. 

How deep do you enfranchise a logo into your organization?  If you really want it to work, you have to go deep—more like a tattoo.  If you want to change you have to really invest to change the indelible ink stain on the public’s collective brain.

Logos do need to be updated from time to time, but know that the rebranding process is expensive both in actual dollars and the lost brand equity you have to rebuild.

I go to the YMCA fairly regularly, but I didn’t know the logo had changed until I read about it in a marketing blog.  So far the national effort has not made it to the users of the Y.  It reminds me of the old saying, “All politics Is Local.”  Maybe we could rephrase that now to “All Marketing is Local.”

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Give Me Some Old Brand Religion

People, especially the nonreligious,  literally put faith in some brands.

According to a new study released in the journal Marketing Science, brands can be a significant signal of self-worth, and for the nonreligious, serve as a religious experience for the user of the brand. The study, Brands:  The Opiate of the NonReligious Masses?, found that some brand purchases go beyond  what you would expect and people believe they are a more worthwhile person because of their purchase.  The author of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy states that Apple is a “mini-religion.”  

And, just like religion, some owning brands believe they are superior to others who don’t own the brand.  Just listen to any Apple-PC debate.

Would your brand qualify as a religion?  It would mean than you have:

• A strong moral code (vision/mission statement),
• Repeated rituals (can people count on your processes),
• Your own language (inside lingo you share only with consumers understand),
• A way to share (brand experiences shared on social media)
• A set of shared beliefs (benefits communicated consistently)
• A written document (a marketing plan)

“The way you create a relationship with the consumer is to make sure you mirror the consumer’s emotions into the brand.  So, if I really love a brand, I love it because I feel the brand understands me, but also because it reflects something which I’d like to stand for,” said Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology talking on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

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Coffee Logos and Coffee

Does a logo make a coffee taste better?  Do new ads, billboards and a different color coffee cup lid make you buy more?  Caribou coffee thinks so and has retooled its look and feel.  In the StarTribune.com, Caribou’s senior vice president said he wanted a visual signal that “Caribou is alive and well.”  

New Caribou Logo

Old Caribou Logo

I’m a Starbucks fan.  I don’t know why, but I just love their coffee products even though my doctor has me drinking decaf.  Last year I visited the first Starbucks in Seattle.  It was like a journey to Mecca.  I’m so “branded.”  As you can see there was even a guy singing a song about me having my photo taken outside the home store. 

But what role does the look play in my coffee enjoyment?  And, has Caribou changed it’s overall look enough to entice new drinkers?  You must judge for yourself, but Starbucks is better branded to me.  The new Caribou logo looks a little to esoteric and it won’t show up well on a sign.   I also don’t believe that the new look represents the corporate culture and store environment.   Starbucks is loud and literal, and you can see it a mile away.  

To me, you can’t change a logo to what you are not.  It has to be true to the personality of your business or organization.  Time for another “venti decaf nonfat latte extra hot.”

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A Logo Test

Quick, what is Geico’s logo?  Did you guess a gecko?  A caveman?  Or, did you guess the money with the googly eyes?  Actually, Geico’s logo is just a dark-blue font, which is Eurostile Bold Extended.  But does their logo really matter?

I believe the day of lifeless logos may have passed while we were all watching the recession.  The Internet is changing everything.  But changing things more than the Internet is clutter.  You have to breakthrough to be noticed.  Safe is not a safe marketing strategy.     

Geico created strong avatars for its brand — stronger icons than its logo.  Or maybe better than its logo.  Or maybe the avatars are now the logos.  Today, flat, inanimate logos are changing into lifelike, moving icons. 

The Internet has made Disney creatives of us all.  Today, logos need to be engaging, compelling, they need to move and they must be more human.  Humanizing your logo will help make it memorable. 

Think about AFLAC.  What does AFLAC’s  logo look like?  A white duck, right?  See the Jolly Green Giant in your mind?  Now, what does the logo look like?

“An avatar even goes further by becoming the symbolic actor in a continuing brand story,” says Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap.  It is time to get your logo into action.  And that will re-energize your brand and your organization.

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