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Making logos matter.
Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2001
IT IS GETTING HARD to tell company logos apart without a cheat sheet.
Suez, a Paris energy, water and waste-management concern, this spring launched Ondeo, which helps build water treatment plants among other things, with a global ad campaign that ran in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. What surprised marketers was how closely the new company's emblem -- droplets of water that form a human figure -- resembled the Cingular Wireless logo introduced in October, 2000, a paint splat that also looks like a human being.
Olivia Barberis, communications manager for Ondeo, agrees the two are similar but insists Ondeo's icon conveys a unique message. "Our logo is clearly coming from water, and it should show that," she says.
At a time when dozens of corporate logos share so many characteristics they appear to be related by inbreeding, some marketing observers say the broad graphic trend has gone too far.
"Having a logo that is just like another company's is a waste of money," says Pamela W. Henderson, associate professor of marketing at Washington State University. "It makes no sense. Business 101 is differentiation. It is the basis for existing."
Dr. Henderson, who has published numerous academic studies about logos, believes that companies investing millions of dollars on advertising often boost their competitors' market share more than their own when they share similar logos. "If I have a logo that looks like a globe and I don't link my name and logo directly to my campaign, then my advertising actually helps the market leader who is also using a globe," she says.
Despite such concerns, many big brands now share logo characteristics. Ameritech, a unit of SBC Communications; Japan's NTT Communications; 3dfx Interactive; and Dow Jones, which publishes the Journal, use variations of the famous Nike swoosh. It represents motion, and modernism, according to Gianninoto Associates, a New York design firm.
John A. DiGianni, president of the firm, says that he often urges his clients to take risks but that they are more comfortable choosing graphics that have already achieved a measure of popularity. "They're a little timid," he says.
Among the most popular logos is the global swoosh, which bears semblance to the planet Saturn. Telecommunications equipment provider Nortel Networks, Internet service provider Earthlink and Planetweb, which makes Internet browsing software, all use different forms of the global swoosh.
Although marketing traditionalists say a logo should be unique, companies increasingly today choose similar symbols. "There is a desire to look like your part of the category," says Robert Kahn, executive director of world-wide marketing at FutureBrand, Interpublic Group's global branding consulting unit. "If you're an airline you don't want to look like an ice cream company."
Mr. Kahn believes problems arise when "companies misinterpret the need to be a part of a category, take it too far and end up with sameness. Sameness equals lack of distinctiveness. And distinctiveness drives preference." He points to the slew of telecommunications concerns that share images of globes in their logos, including AT&T, Global Crossing and London-based Cable & Wireless.
"The telecommunication industry has suffered from a love affair with using the globe as a way to convey global communications," says Mr. Kahn. As a result he says, "Everybody who has a globe has lost distinctiveness."
AT&T knows first hand how hard it is to create an instantly recognizable logo. During the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, AT&T handed out T-shirts and hats adorned with its globe. But because the handouts didn't include the AT&T name, few recognized them as phone-company largesse. "We put the horse before the cart," says AT&T spokesman Burke Stinson. The communications company has since invested millions of dollars in a new ad campaign that uses a three-dimensional version of the logo as its focal point. "Today, our logo might be able to stand alone," says Mr. Stinson.
The most startling aspect of the logo love-in is how few companies seem to object when others introduce similar corporate icons.
Cingular, the wireless joint venture of SBC Communications and BellSouth, was determined to avoid logo clutter when it commissioned VSA Partners in Chicago to create a new logo. It also hired trademark attorneys to examine thousands of logos to ensure that its logo -- a character nicknamed Jack -- was distinctive and unique. "We didn't want another swoosh -- there are a lot of swooshes these days," says Virginia Vann, Cingular's chief marketing officer.
Despite that investment in time and capital, however, Ms. Vann says she isn't upset about similarities with Ondeo's logo. What is important, she says, is creating a logo that has vitality. Ms. Vann says Cingular has done this by featuring Jack as a major part of the company's estimated $200 million ad campaign. In a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, for example, the logo is linked by dialogue bubbles a la comic books to phrases from Shakespeare and Homer Simpson.
Of course Ms. Vann may have good reason for her live-and-let-live approach. Among the logos Cingular closely studied is one used by Excite, the Web-portal company owned by Excite@Home, the Redwood City, Calif., provider of high-speed Internet access. Excite's logo, which is derived from the X in its name, also uses a character that resembles human figure.
Excite isn't excited either. "There is certainly always a lot of logo coping going on," says Alison Bowman, a spokeswoman for Excite. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
© Wall Street Journal, 2001. |
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