Pacific Coast Business Times Published My Article on Dangers of Logo Changes

Logo Changes Are Fraught with Danger

As a leadership and management consultant, I am often asked for advice by organizations contemplating altering or replacing their logos. From experience and instinct, I usually urge caution. I have found that most logos are changed for political or personal reasons rather than strategic reasons.

That said, there are indeed certain circumstances that may constitute valid reasons for changing your organization’s logo as part of a larger rebranding initiative. Here are three of the more compelling ones:

1.     A merger, acquisition or dramatically altered marketplace that promises to significantly change your organization

2.     The transfiguring of your business strategy, corporate culture, marketplace positioning and your very raison d’être

3.      A major crisis that is shaking your institution’s foundation by damaging its reputation and alienating key constituencies

Having been directly involved in highly successful rebranding efforts in both the for-profit and not-for-profit world that included a reexamination of several diverse firm’s existing logos, I am inherently suspicious whenever marketers or executives push to change their institution’s logos.

A careful review of the literature reveals that the higher education, hospital and private industry landscape is cluttered with botched rebranding efforts.

Several examples of highly contested logo changes in the last few years are worth recalling. They include the GAP, UC Berkeley, Tropicana, Pepsi, Starbucks and many other organizations. While each case is different in some respects from the others, marketer and executive egos played a larger role than is desirable. And, in most of these cases, the organizations were forced by consumer outrage to return to their previous logo.

It has often been said, “experience is the best teacher.” I was fortunate in my formative years to work with three excellent organizations: Fleishman Hillard, KPMG and Burson Marsteller. They taught me to tread carefully when dealing with logos and rebranding initiatives because consumers are often fickle and unpredictable. It is one of the reasons I believe in market research that asks consumers what they currently think rather than what their future views may be.

Before embarking on a logo change, I suggest that your organization consider the following key questions:

·      Is the existing logo not fulfilling its stated purposes in brand building?

·      Is your marketing director or vice president trying to make his or her own personal imprint on the institution by advocating a logo change?

·      Is the logo a source of major controversy among your most important constituencies?

·      Is the logo outdated or particularly challenging to reproduce?

·      What specific marketing objectives are you seeking with a new “look”?

·      Are you fully prepared for a potentially significant negative reaction, even after adequate market testing?

·      Are you willing to underwrite and cost and inconvenience of a logo change?

·      Is your marketing team singularly focused on and highly skilled in continuing to build your brand and keeping it alive by consistently penetrating your consumers’ mind? Are they successfully communicating your brand promise 24/7?

Branding guru and Stamats executive Bob Sevier, one of the nation’s most prominent, values-driven and visionary marketing experts, often reminded me that even the best-designed logos are but graphic symbols—every one of which requires compelling stories, interesting anecdotes, desirable experiences and fond memories associated with ideals to make them sustainable and differentiated.  In a word, a logo has to have meaning. A beautifully designed book cover may get you inside but it is the content that must capture your imagination and hold your attention.

I believe logos are one way a brand is expressed, but in the larger scheme of things logos are less important than how organizations act. Multi-platform marketing is about the brand. The challenge, it seems to me, is to integrate the brand across multi platforms. I found that it is more difficult to establish a brand across multi platforms (e.g. many audiences) in higher education than in large corporations because the stakeholders in a university are more independent and more diversified in their purpose.

Al Ries and Jack Trout, authors of the best selling book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, remind us that changing your logo won’t change the brand in the consumer’s mind. But as the Alexander White Consultancy suggests, years of investment in building the brand, consistent use and full compliance among all visual elements, sharpened focus and penetration will.

Rather than taking the time and spending the money involved in redesigning your logo (and concurrently taking your eye off the real “ball” – to strengthen your brand), it is frequently far more productive to challenge your marketing team to intensify their efforts to further permeate the minds of your most important customer groups.