Business Logo Facelifts: High Risk, High Reward (Part 1 of 2)
Companies spend millions of dollars enlisting branding firms to revitalize logos they have deemed old and tired. Potential gains include rejuvenating your brand's image, building up new good will among consumers and redefining your place in the market. On the flip side, a perfectly good brand may be tarnished by a questionable makeover.
Major players like Pepsi, Walmart, and UPS all have put their logos under the knife in recent years. It's definitely a balancing act as these businesses have to take care to maintain enough of a connection between the old and new images while modernizing their respective logos to stay fresh.
Also, think of the consumer--with familiarity comes comfort. When updating a logo, will your followers continue to be loyal? How many will turn up their noses at the changes? And for those who never liked to brand anyway, overcoming their existing bias is a gamble.
Notable rebranding misses of late include Kraft, Tropicana and Xerox. A common flaw to all of these redesigns is that they risked the unique qualities of the original in the name of "progress." A company must consider the reaction of its existing customer base as well as that of the new one it wants to bring in!
In the next segment, I'll compare the old and new looks for Pepsi! Stay tuned…
