A logo is often the first thing people notice about a business. But its real value goes far beyond looking good. The right logo, supported by a well-defined brand strategy, can change perceptions, rebuild confidence, create commercial opportunities and help turn a struggling business into a market leader.
There is a tendency to think of logo design as a relatively straightforward creative exercise. Find a suitable symbol, choose a typeface, select some colours and put them together in a way that looks distinctive.
But that rather misses the point.
A logo is one of the most visible expressions of a brand. It is a recognisable identifier, a shorthand for everything a business represents and, when developed properly, an asset that can accumulate enormous commercial value over time.
Some of the world's most successful businesses have discovered that a change in brand identity, combined with a fundamental rethink of how they present themselves to the marketplace, can make a remarkable difference to their fortunes.
And some of the most interesting examples come from businesses that were in serious trouble.
A logo is more than a picture
Before looking at some famous transformations, it's worth understanding what a logo is actually supposed to achieve.
A successful logo should do several things:
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Create recognition: Help people identify a business quickly and distinguish it from competitors.
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Communicate character: Give an immediate impression of the organisation's personality, positioning and values.
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Build confidence: Present a professional, credible and consistent image that people can trust.
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Create differentiation: Give the business a distinctive visual presence in a crowded marketplace.
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Build equity: Become an identifiable asset that gains meaning and value through repeated positive experiences.
Importantly, a logo doesn't need to explain everything a business does. In fact, the strongest logos are often deceptively simple.
Think of the Nike swoosh, Apple's bitten apple or the three stripes of Adidas. None tells you what the business makes, but each has become an extraordinarily powerful visual shorthand for the brand behind it.
That recognition has been built over years through consistency, experience, reputation and communication.
The logo is the identifier. The brand is everything that gives it meaning.
Burberry: From damaged reputation to global luxury brand
One of the most interesting examples of brand transformation is British fashion house Burberry.
By the late 1990s, Burberry was experiencing a serious decline in its reputation and commercial performance. Once associated with quality, heritage and British sophistication, its famous check pattern had become widely available and was increasingly associated with an image that was far removed from the luxury positioning the company wanted to achieve.
The business had lost some of its exclusivity and appeal. Its profits reportedly fell from £62 million to £25 million, and its future as a premium fashion house was in question.
The answer wasn't simply to commission a new logo.
Under new leadership, Burberry began a comprehensive brand transformation. It repositioned itself as a contemporary luxury brand, strengthened control over licensing, refocused its product offer, invested in design and innovation, and reconnected its heritage with a more aspirational audience.
Its visual identity and use of brand assets became an important part of this process. The famous check was used more selectively, while the equestrian knight emblem and Thomas Burberry signature helped reinforce its heritage and identity.
Celebrity campaigns, including those featuring Kate Moss, helped introduce Burberry to a younger audience.
The result was a remarkable recovery. Burberry re-established itself as an internationally recognised luxury fashion house, rather than simply a traditional British clothing manufacturer.
The lesson: A brand's most recognisable asset can sometimes become part of its problem. Protecting, managing and repositioning those assets is just as important as creating them in the first place.
Old Spice: Making an old brand relevant again
Old Spice is another excellent example of how a brand can change its fortunes by changing the way people perceive it.
For years, Old Spice had been seen by many younger consumers as a brand their fathers and grandfathers used. It had heritage, recognition and a long-established reputation, but it was struggling to connect with a new generation of customers.
By 2006, the brand was losing ground in an increasingly competitive market.
Rather than abandon its heritage, Old Spice decided to embrace it in a completely different way.
Its repositioning culminated in the now-famous 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like' campaign, featuring the charismatic Old Spice Guy. The creative approach was humorous, confident, unexpected and deliberately different from traditional men's grooming advertising.
The brand's visual presentation, tone of voice, packaging and communications worked together to create a much more contemporary personality.
The results were impressive. The campaign generated more than 65 million online views, while Old Spice Body Wash sales increased by 11% in the 12 months following the rebrand, according to reporting by The Guardian.
Old Spice hadn't needed to invent a new product category or abandon its name. It needed to change the meaning people attached to it.
The lesson: A brand doesn't always need to start again. Sometimes its greatest opportunity lies in rediscovering what makes it distinctive and presenting that value in a way that today's customers understand.
LEGO: Finding its identity again
LEGO provides another fascinating example, although its recovery demonstrates something particularly important: branding must be supported by the reality of the business.
In 2003 and 2004, LEGO was facing an existential crisis. Sales had fallen dramatically, debt had reached unsustainable levels and the company was close to bankruptcy.
The business had expanded into too many areas, introduced products that moved away from its core strengths and lost some of the clarity that had made it successful.
Its recovery wasn't achieved by simply redesigning its logo.
Under new leadership, LEGO went back to understanding what made it special. It refocused on its core building system, simplified its operations, improved its product development and reconnected with the customers who loved its products.
It rediscovered the power of its original proposition: imagination, creativity and the simple pleasure of building something.
The LEGO logo itself was already highly recognisable. The real transformation was about restoring clarity, consistency and purpose to the business behind it.
By 2014, LEGO had become the global leader in the toy market and one of the industry's fastest-growing and most profitable businesses.
The lesson: Sometimes the most valuable thing a rebrand can do is not change how a business looks, but help it understand what it stands for and what it should be doing.
The danger of changing a logo without a strategy
Of course, changing a logo doesn't automatically create value.
In fact, some of the most publicised rebrands have demonstrated precisely the opposite.
When Gap introduced a new logo in 2010, replacing its familiar blue square with a more generic-looking design, the response was overwhelmingly negative. Customers and design commentators questioned the change, and Gap reverted to its original logo within days.
It was an expensive lesson in the importance of understanding the value of existing brand recognition.
A logo that has been built into the public consciousness over many years shouldn't be discarded without a very good reason.
There needs to be a clear commercial or strategic purpose behind any change.
A new logo should solve a problem, unlock an opportunity or better represent the direction in which a business is moving. It shouldn't simply reflect someone's desire for something more fashionable.
So, what makes a successful logo?
The best logos don't happen by accident. They are the result of understanding the business, its ambitions, its marketplace and the people it needs to influence.
At Think Brands, we believe the process should begin long before anyone starts drawing.
We need to understand:
Where is the business now?
What does the existing brand communicate? How is it perceived? What reputation has it built, and are there any issues that need to be addressed?
Where does the business want to go?
Is it looking to attract a different audience, move into new markets, command higher prices, introduce new services or compete at a different level?
What makes it different?
What does the business offer that competitors don't? What should people remember about it? What is its personality, its purpose and its promise?
What needs protecting?
Does the business own its name, logo, visual assets and intellectual property? Are its trademarks protected? Are there existing brand assets with significant commercial value that need to be retained and managed?
Only when these questions have been considered can the creative process begin with a clear purpose.
The resulting logo should be distinctive, appropriate, versatile and capable of working consistently across every place the brand needs to appear.
And it should be designed with the future in mind, not simply to look good today.
A logo is an investment in the future of your business
A successful logo can become one of the most valuable assets a business owns.
It can help customers recognise you, remember you, choose you and trust you. It can give employees a shared sense of identity, help attract new opportunities and provide a consistent foundation for marketing and communications.
But its value depends on how well it is conceived, developed, protected and managed.
The examples of Burberry, Old Spice and LEGO demonstrate that businesses can recover from difficult positions and create extraordinary value when they rediscover their identity and reconnect with their marketplace.
They also demonstrate that a logo alone cannot rescue a failing business. The real value comes from aligning the visual identity with a compelling proposition, a clear strategy and a business that delivers on its promises.
At Think Brands, we see logo creation as an important part of a much bigger picture.
We bring together brand strategy, creative thinking and commercial understanding to help businesses create identities that do more than look impressive.
We help businesses define what they stand for, establish how they should be seen, develop the assets that represent them and protect the intellectual property and ownership that underpin their brand.
Because a logo shouldn't just identify your business. It should help build its value.
Think Brands – Building, developing and protecting brands for the future.
