REBRANDING
“IN A WORLD WHERE INTERNET USERS ARE CONSUMING AN ASTONISHING AMOUNT OF INFORMATION ALL THE TIME, SIMPLICITY IS A VIRTUE.”
Another obvious potential pitfall of changing a company’s logo is the question of how much to publicise the change, and how best to explain the decision to consumers in a clear and useful way. Do you launch with a fanfare and lots of publicity, or just start using the logo and hope that when people notice, they like it?
eBay went for something of a middle road between these two extremes. While there was an announcement, and the news was of course picked up by international media outlets, a casual user of the site could easily not have been aware of
the change. Indeed, a cursory
look at comments about the logo on Twitter suggests that many users didn’t notice at first. And because the new logo didn’t go live in every country in the world at the same time, some users are still interacting with sites that carry the old logo. Te whole transition process could take more than a year. Tat said, eBay certainly did put in a substantial effort to support the change.
Von Schirmeister says: “We refreshed our brand to reflect the evolution of our business. It was therefore crucial that the logo was launched in a way that explained the broader strategic context.
“We created a micro site—
http://www.ebay.com/ new—which contained the new logo, a message from the president of eBay Marketplaces, Devin Weign, explaining how the new logo reflected the new eBay and the new features and enhancements which would be coming to the site over the coming months, plus a look book, an infographic, a social feed and Frequently Asked Questions.”
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Weign’s message is interesting, because it clearly sets the new logo in the context of wider developments to eBay’s offering. “We’re delivering a cleaner, contemporary look and feel; a more intuitive, convenient way to browse, decide and buy—both globally and locally; and a new personal way to curate your own shopping experience and discover items perfect for you. Tese new experiences will be rolled live in the coming weeks in the US and around the world in the coming months. Additionally, our new logo goes live.”
Tis kind of approach makes sense. If you’re revamping what you do, then it’s logical also to revamp how it looks, though Von Schirmeister underlines that “the logo change didn’t drive the new features, nor the new features the logo”.
And what about intellectual property? With a new logo comes new responsibility. As you would expect, the logo has been trademarked in the US and internationally, and Von Schirmeister says that “use of the eBay name and logo are allowed only if an individual or organisation has a written licensing agreement with eBay”.
Efforts to protect the new brand will have to be at least matched with continued work on protecting the old one, given that the old logo will continue to enjoy greater recognition for a while at least.
Signs of maturity
eBay is not the only large company to have refreshed its logo recently. Microsoſt did the same in August 2012, while Google’s logo was updated back in 2010. What is striking about all
three is that they seem to adhere to a loose set of common principles. All three use a four-colour model, where the colours are variations on blue, green, red and yellow/orange. Tis presumably has much to do with the RGB colour model used in computers, and all three companies used versions of it before their rebrands.
Microsoſt and eBay both opted for a cleaner, simpler font, eschewing italics in Microsoſt’s case and overlaps between letters in eBay’s. Google’s change was less drastic, though that company too removed ‘noise’ from the logo, in that case getting rid of the shadowing behind its name and slightly altering the yellow colour to a more orange hue. It’s worth remembering that in a previous rebrand, Google removed an entire exclamation mark from its logo. Twitter also changed its logo, in June 2012, and while it shares few elements with the others discussed, there does seem to have been a similar move away from cutesiness and complexity towards a simpler, more grown-up approach.
So what’s behind this apparent shiſt in emphasis? Perhaps it’s to do with a general perception that the Internet has truly come of age in the past few years. Or perhaps it’s an acknowledgement that
the companies themselves (Twitter
excepted) are now Internet veterans rather than brash young upstarts. Or maybe it’s just because each of the new logos is easier to read, and in a world where Internet users are consuming an astonishing amount of information all the time, simplicity is a virtue. In any event, where Google, Microsoſt and eBay lead, you would expect others to follow.
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 4 15
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