How to Change Your Logo and Not Look Stupid!

18 comments Written on October 13th, 2010 by
Categories: Marketing, Strategy
Tags: , , ,

Worst Logo Ever!The past few weeks have witnessed some major consumer brands changing their logos: Belk, MySpace, The Gap, etc.  Most notably was The Gap who changed their logo to one of the worst designs I’ve seen in my 20 years of marketing communications.  After much public disapproval and constant web and social chatter, The Gap decided to go back to their old logo.  However in the meantime they also said they would crowdsource a new design, another bad decision.

I’m not going to question what the decision makers were thinking at The Gap, they don’t pay me to do that.  Instead I reflected back on the fact that several of the companies I’ve worked for have changed their name, identity and other marketing symbols and done so without the uproar that we witnessed last week. So what are the considerations when deciding to change, modify or update your company name and/or logo?

  1. Why the change? Has your product become synonymous with something that leaves a bad taste in your customer’s mouth? Has technology moved past your current product or service offering? This was the case in my first company that sold mainframe software. The company name was VM Systems Group based on the VM and related IBM mainframe platforms. When we acquired a new modem software company we had problems calling customers who heard the term VM and said, “we don’t use VM,” and hung up. So a name change was necessary to sell beyond our traditional customer base.
  2. What is the impact? There are several facets to this question. There will be impact on the brand equity. How much will you throw away and how much effort will be required to generate awareness of the new name and logo? Operations and finance will want to know how much is it going to cost. If your company has a large library of printed collateral, trade show booths and graphics and other corporate swag, how much money will you have to spend to recreate, reprint and rebuild all of the physical stuff?
  3. What is the commitment? The Gap demonstrated that there was a total lack of commitment in several areas to both the old and new logo. When I first saw the new design my first question was, is this a joke? A name and identity change should involve commitment from all levels and department of management. This process also allows you to get feedback on every aspect from design to practicality. For example does the new design work on delivery trucks, packaging, uniforms, web, event materials, etc. By involving the different functional teams in your company you can get this feedback before final decisions are made in a vacuum.
  4. Finally there should be a communication plan. Traditional designers will rollout a spec book or guidelines on where the new logo is placed on literature or how to display on dark backgrounds. This is only half of the plan. A communication plan should also include the elevator pitch your employees need to know and believe in to build a strong brand experience. If you’re brand ambassadors answer the question of why did your company change the name/logo with “I don’t know,” or even worse “I don’t like it” then you did not do your job. Employees, partners and all stakeholders need to be comfortable in communicating why and how important the change was to your company moving forward.

To use my old company from the first point, the answer to the question would not be, “because we don’t just sell VM software,” it was, “our new offering includes a whole new suite of products for the corporate PC user.” (Note: it was 1993 and corporate PCs were new back then!)

Your corporate identity precedes your current and future employees. Don’t muck it up because you did not take the time to research, listen and perform due diligence to make the change a success rather than the next marketing case study!

Tags: , , ,

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under Marketing, Strategy. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Brian McDonald
http://www.squarejawmedia.com
Brian McDonald started Square Jaw Media to document strategies and techniques he had used over his experience working in marketing and communications since 1990. During this time Brian wrote about many of the exciting Raleigh social media events where great knowledge was being shared and tries to share some of the tips and tricks.

  • Pingback: Tweets that mention How to Change Your Logo and Not Look Stupid! | Square Jaw Media -- Topsy.com

  • http://www.centerline.net John Lane

    This is a great list of things to keep in mind when the idea of a mark change comes up. I’d like to add another big one to the list: Research.

    Research kind of falls into 1, 2 and 4 on your list. But regardless of where it’s sorted, it’s imperative you understand from your customers point of view what “brand equity” really means. I seriously doubt there was any research done by Gap to understand what their brand — and all icons that represent it — truly mean to both their fans and detractors.

    And while research (surveys, interviews, SM monitoring, etc.) is important for any brand before taking on an endeavor like this, it’s even more important for what I would consider a “lightening rod” brand like Gap. There are deep-seeded feelings about Gap from two very different angles that could cause backlash against a redesign that research would’ve made them acutely aware of: Gap *was* once the aspirational brand of many Gen Xers (and others) — those feelings are still relevant; and they were (and still are) the icon against which counter-culture, anti-mainstream fashion throngs railed against. Understanding the nuances of both groups attitudes toward your brand should guide your design to success.

    And then, as you absolutely, correctly point out, comes commitment. Pepsi is the best, most recent example I can think of to illustrate this. When they rolled out their latest mark, it’s fair to say the vocal majority wasn’t on board. But through commitment — including Pepsi’s ability to laugh at itself a bit about the situation — they made the mark feel right, become accepted, and even move from the public from “why change?” to “it all makes sense.” In other words, if you don’t have a defensible position for the change, don’t do it.

    Thanks for starting the conversation.

  • http://twitter.com/johnvlane John Lane

    This is great list of things to keep in mind when considering a brand change, and why. I’d like to add one more: Research.

    Research is a big part of accomplishing several of the things you mentioned, like gaining understanding of what’s causing the bad taste about our brand. And predicting the possible impacts. If you’re not asking/monitoring your current and potential customers to discover what people currently think of your brand — why they like you or not, why they like your competitors, etc. — then you are working in an echo chamber of self-opinion. And you’re destined to miss the mark of what anyone thinks about you but your current or future brand. I seriously doubt Gap and/or their agency was doing the leg work necessary to understand what their brand and visual identity means to anyone before decided to change it, and what to change it to.

    And for a company like Gap — a brand I consider a “lightning rod” brand — the need to understand what brand equity really equates to in terms of public opinion was even more important. There are deep-seeded feelings about Gap from two very different perspectives: They once were the aspirational brand for many Gen Xers (and others); but they were also the icon against which counter-culture, anti-mainstream fashion throngs railed against. Both these perspectives should’ve been seen as prime to have a strong reaction to a brand change.

    And that’s where commitment comes in. As you astutely point out, without internal commitment to the change, you can’t expect external acceptance of the change. The best, most recent example of this is Pepsi. When they rolled out their new mark, it’s fair to say the majority of vocal public opinion wasn’t favorable. But Pepsi’s commitment was absolute…including being able to poke fun at themselves for the change in a way that actually supported their new brand mark. That kind of commitment is what moved opinion from “what were they thinking?!” to “it all makes sense!”

    In other words, if you can’t easily defend the change of your brand — based in research and backed by commitment to change — don’t do it.

    Thanks for starting the conversation.

  • http://www.squarejawmedia.com Brian McDonald

    John,

    Thanks for adding the research points. I think it goes without saying that The Gap totally overlooked this. Or maybe the whole thing was a hoax to generate brand awareness? Would love for someone on the team to speak up about their process and what they learned from it. Pepsi is another great recent example of rollout with negative feedback. Although much of the negative came from designers and marketers not so much from the general public. Sometimes I wonder how much of this goes beyond our echo chamber and makes it’s way to Joe Q Public and his friends that are putting more dollars into the big brands’ pockets than us marketing hipsters.

  • http://squarejawmedia.com/ Brian McDonald

    John,

    Thanks for adding the research points. I think it goes without saying that The Gap totally overlooked this. Or maybe the whole thing was a hoax to generate brand awareness? Would love for someone on the team to speak up about their process and what they learned from it. Pepsi is another great recent example of rollout with negative feedback. Although much of the negative came from designers and marketers not so much from the general public. Sometimes I wonder how much of this goes beyond our echo chamber and makes it’s way to Joe Q Public and his friends that are putting more dollars into the big brands’ pockets than us marketing hipsters.

  • http://squarejawmedia.com/ Brian McDonald

    Ryan, thanks for your input. I wonder if crowdsourcing is even a viable option for a major consumer brand like The Gap? Do they really think they are going to get any kind of consistency or brand value from crowdsourcing an established brand?

  • http://ryanskinner.tumblr.com Ryan Skinner

    Absolutely, yes, but not the way they did it. They could have thrown it open as part of a stage in a multi-stage design process. They could have done it well. But it wasn’t thought through, just used as a poor sop to crisis management, I think.

  • http://ryanskinner.tumblr.com Ryan Skinner

    Just to elaborate a little: Imagine if the Gap had run a crowdsourced campaign and invited its followers to vote. The winning crowdsourced design is then sent on to three design companies. They take this popular gesture and professionalize it into a major corporate brand. Then the Gap’s followers vote on these three professional submissions. Voila, you have both a popularly and professionally secured design. This is brand politics in a newly democratic age, non?

  • http://squarejawmedia.com/ Brian McDonald

    Ryan thanks for the clarification!

  • http://ryanskinner.tumblr.com Ryan Skinner

    Three basic questions I think should be asked and answered before approaching a crowdsource model like Gap:
    1. Are you really committed to the result?
    2. How have you packaged the assignment?
    3. Do you know your audience of crowdsource workers?
    I elaborate a little on these basic points here:

  • http://twitter.com/johnvlane John Lane

    Good point about professional designers in regard to the negative sentiment surrounding Pepsi redesign. But as we’re measuring the response to Gap based highly on Twitter, I wonder if we’d see that the majority of that response was mostly design/marketing pros as well. Even if the population of Twitter was more rounded, I’d venture it’s not even close to representative of all public sentiment. In fact, as was pointed out by the numbers after the Motrin Mom’s incident, Twitter/YouTube/Blogs made it look for the world as though everyone hated the campaign… but a survey of the public found that mom’s we’re overwhelmingly ambivalent to the ad. In other words, the vocal few out powered the real (silent) majority.

  • http://squarejawmedia.com/ Brian McDonald

    I think Twitter backlash was more marketing/communications/designer peeps. Although you have to remember many people also complained on Facebook and that spread it to the rest of the population!

  • Pingback: brand aperture

  • http://www.dan-london.com Dan London

    Did you happen to notice the logo change Belk made? The new logo is all over Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh. Seems somewhat similar to the new Gap logo.

  • http://squarejawmedia.com/ Brian McDonald

    I wanted to address the Belk logo but did not want to get too lengthy in the post. Meredith Morgan had the best comment I’ve heard about it, “it looks like the Twitter bird crashed into a window!” It’s better than The Gap logo fiasco but seems that design talent is hard to come by for major retailers!

  • http://www.dan-london.com Dan London

    i wouldn’t blame the design talent. I’d blame the bureaucracy in large companies. When I worked at a local, medium-sized company here in Raleigh, the head of creative wanted to change the logo and was handcuffed by the CEO as to what he could and couldn’t do.

  • http://squarejawmedia.com/ Brian McDonald

    Good point. Yes the decision to accept a crappy logo goes to decision makers. However someone had to design that and say “Yes, this is good.” Goes back to my mantra, “There’s no excuse for a lack of taste or talent!”

  • Pingback: Square Jaw Media | Facebook's New Best Friend? The Gap! | Square Jaw Media