The Value of a Logo

A logo is often the fastest way to build brand recognition. It is the easiest way to consistently apply a visual brand, and is usually the most powerful single visual or verbal brand asset companies possess—apart from their name. In some cases, where a company suffers the misfortune of a poorly crafted name, the logo can become brand asset number one. How well a logo performs for an organization is often a reflection of the company’s willingness to see it as an investment, one they continually have to nurture.

Without constant investment, a logo can become a visual crutch, a go-to that receives little effort and certainly no evaluation of specific needs. It winds up centered on the top of the letterhead and placed with the same heavy-handedness on every other piece of marketing material. In cases like this, the logo had better scream, "This is how we are different and why you should care about us"—a tall order for any symbol.

Unfair Expectations

It is likely that no other piece of graphic design has the unobtainable expectations placed upon it that most clients have for a logo. It is widely thought by clients that a logo should represent every aspect of their positioning—something just not possible. When attempted, the logo is a tangled mess of ideas without focus, failing to please anyone. Instead, a logo should be designed to provide a glimpse into the brand, a visual cue as to why the audience should care about you. It is a symbol that often avoids depicting what the company does in favor of reflecting a company’s qualities.

It is also often expected that a new logo should have the same impact as known brands. In reality, it takes time for a logo to build associations with its audience, developed through experience with the brand. It is not impossible to think that many of the logos we accept as good today would be swiftly killed if presented by a designer to most clients—would the Google logo survive most committees? Would most clients say yes to simple logos like Nike and Apple without adding just a little bit more?

These examples are successful in large part because of their ability to work within a larger, ever changing visual brand. They have developed meaning through time and are now viewed as a stamp of the brand’s promise to its customers. More logos would be successful if the expectations put on them were realistic. A logo should:

1. Be an honest reflection of the brand's positioning and promise
2. Provide differentiation from competitors
3. Allow for easy recognition and associations
4. Be based on a strong creative idea
5. Be able to be used in a variety of ways (black and white, color, large, small)


Creating Trust

A good logo accomplishes all of this, usually through a simple solution without being cliché or trendy. It provides clarity of focus, becoming shorthand for the values of the organization, and the anchor of the visual brand.

Once the audience has an experience with the company, the logo becomes a badge, reflecting their perceived expectations. The company’s own behavior as well as marketing must then do what they can to influence these perceptions, encouraging the logo to become a trustworthy symbol that the customer can rely on every time, providing a clear competitive advantage.
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Steve Zelle is a logo designer and brand identity consultant. Based in Ottawa, Canada, he operates as idApostle and is the founder of the community driven design website Processed Identity. You can reach him through his website or on Twitter. 

Your Brand as Your Business System

The view of what your brand encompasses continues to narrow. With most brand managers lasting only a couple of years in the role, the focus has increasingly become quarterly results, not long term profits.

This is an extremely sad state of affairs, and is bound to do your brand more harm than good.

The reality is that the narrowing of your brand has been driven internally. Brands analyze themselves in great detail, and they should. But consumers rarely put as much conscious thought into it. For the average person, brands are a fluid, everyday aspect of life. I challenge you to find someone who buys your product because of your latest quarterly results.

People purchase your brand because it fits a need (functional, emotional, or both) within the context of their life, and the context of their life is much longer than the 18-24 month tenure of the brand manager.

Expand Your Horizon

To overcome this, you have to start viewing your brand as your entire business system. Allow me to use a simple example to illustrate what this means. If I buy a cell phone from a local carrier, my view of their brand is made up of all the different interactions I have with that company. This still includes the commercials I see on TV, but also factors in the customer service I get on their 1-800 number, the accuracy of my monthly bill and if the phone I want was in stock at their store. The cumulative experiences with all these parts of your business system make up the consumer’s opinion of your brand.

To deliver on all of these different touch points, and in turn build a strong brand, your entire company, or business system, has to be aligned.

Change Your Decision Making Lens

If everyone your company can line-up behind your brand, and recognize that every part of the business system is a part of the brand, you can experience some amazing results. Suddenly, everyone in the organization has a clear lens with which to evaluate any decision. Does buying this new machine help deliver our brand? Does re-organizing this team help deliver our brand? What about the message in this commercial? Or the turnaround time for deliveries?

Who Should Own the Brand?

Many companies have a role whose responsibility is essentially to act as the owner of the brand. Some companies go so far as to make this a role in their executive team. But even that is a step too short.

Overall responsibility for the brand must rest with the only person that can oversee the entire business system – the CEO. No other person in the organization has the cross-enterprise point-of-view required to understand the brand or the power to bring about the changes needed to deliver on your brand.

Adopting the philosophy of your brand as your business system also means that every person in your organization has some level of responsibility for your brand as well. And this can be a powerful motivator employees at all levels of your organization.

What should your brand do next?

No one expects that you stop running regular promotions. Ongoing objectives are important and shouldn’t be washed out by a higher order need of your brand. But at the same time, you need to start thinking, at a very high level, about what your brand should stand for.  Different companies will call it different things – your brand vision, brand promise, brand essence. But what you call it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you have a clear sense of what your brand stands for and wants to deliver to consumers. Then you need to ensure that all the different parts of your business system – the people, technology, processes, etc – are aligned to that vision.

After that, you’ll be amazed how easily your weekly promotions come.

Ben Wise blogs at Ben Wise on Branding and works regularly with leading brands at LEVEL5 Strategic Brand Advisors. 

A Teen's Perspective on Brands

Note: Image created by Christiaan Welzel from Critical Mass for the Sean The Tool blog

Hello there, distinguished readers of More than a Logo. My name is Sean, and I have been asked by Nicole to share some insights into teenagers and their relationships with brands. Being sixteen, I have been able to pierce the murky veil that is the teenage mind and harvest valuable nuggets of information for your benefit. This brain harvesting really just boiled down to some organized discussions and surveys, so do not fret, there was no actual mind invasion (that I know of).

I have learned much during my summer internship at Critical Mass, about the teenage mind and how they view brands. Teens, when first asked about their opinions on brands, will initially become angry and violent, spitting defensively, like llamas. However once you calm them down and clean off the spit, you’ll see that brands play a huge part of every teen’s life. But a brand has to do a lot of work to earn the trust and loyalty of a teenager. They have to be able to offer three things; relevance, quality, and choice.

Relevance is important, in that a teen will only connect with brands that have something to do with their lives. So they aren’t going to develop a deep loyalty to your company’s trash bags, no matter how hard you try. Quality comes into play in multiple ways. If a brand is associated with shoddy products, well you’re out of luck. Teens can spot bad products from a mile away, and it will be nigh impossible for you to reclaim their trust after they have associated your brand with poor quality. Quality is also vital when it comes to advertising. An entertaining ad speaks volumes about how much a brand cares about consumers, and teens recognize this.

The most necessary of the three is choice. Never force anything upon a teenager. This is a great way to get them to start the spitting, and trust me you don’t want that, their saliva is laced with toxins most foul. Instead of pushing teenagers through the proverbial doorway, you should just hold the door open for them. Let them look inside your metaphorical brand-house because they chose to, not because you made them. And trust me, if your brand is relevant to them, and has quality to back it up, you’ll have no problems with that.  And when you gain a teen’s trust, they will stay unwaveringly loyal to your brand, as long as you continue to provide excellence. Just ask any teen who owns a Mac if he’ll ever buy a PC.

Teens aren’t as strange or unpredictable as people make them out to be, we’re just a bit different. Some time and effort will allow you to better connect with us in ways we appreciate. Teens can say they distrust brands all they want, but in reality they are just as important to us as they are to anyone else. Which is to say, they are very important. 

See more of Sean's insights on teens from part of his summer project on Sean The Tool blog

Follow Sean on Twitter (@deus_ex_machine) or his blog (The Deus ex Machina Machine) 

Pursuing My Passion in London

In an effort to pursue my passion for branding and gain experience in markets beyond North America, I will be embarking on the next phase on my life adventure by moving to London, England from Calgary, Canada.

I look forward to being closer to the action and continuing to help brands around the world make meaning and live it everyday!

As for my next opportunity, I will be joining the Blast Radius London strategy team working on clients like Starbucks UK, Bacardi and Nokia.  

I'm excited to work with an international team that shares my passion for brand strategy and leveraging organizations' brand purposes by creating reasons to believe through digital initiatives.

Although I'm excited for this next chapter, it doesn't go without saying how much I have loved working for Critical Mass, and appreciate the opportunities they have given me over the past 2 and a half years.  

If I hadn't joined this incredibly talented and passionate team, I would not have been exposed to the the amazing world of digital marketing, nor realize the incredible impact it can make on creating long-term brand loyalty and trust.

I will greatly miss working with this amazing team, but am happy to know that I have made some wonderful friends along the way.

So for the next couple weeks, while I pack up and say good-bye, then say hello to my new and exciting life in London, I have arranged a few guest authors to contribute to More Than A Logo including a teenage perspective on branding from Sean Willett, the 16-year-old intern I had the pleasure of mentoring this summer.  

The next time you hear from me I will be reporting from London. See you in a couple of weeks. 

Note: The above drawing was created by the amazingly talented Barb Kelly

The Island of Misfit Launches

One of my favorite sites to follow is PSFK. It is filled with the latest trends and innovations. I find it always exciting to see what's happening around the world and how it's changing based on those trends.


This morning, while scanning PSFK, I came across this cartoon and figured I have to share it on my blog. Too much fun! 


Below the cartoon is a great list of brand strategy and advertising stories that I would recommend you all to check out. Click here for the list.


Happy Friday everyone.