The logo revamp: Is it really required?

A logo is not just a picture or a design—it is the first touch point that defines a brand—the Emotional Connect.

Every brand on the planet has a character—just like a human. Each character has a unique brand positioning. Let's say Mercedes stands for legacy and the pinnacle of luxury. On the other hand, its counterpart, BMW, stands for performance and luxury. Even though luxury is common in both, they are focused on different individuals, or their customer base is entirely different.

Now, you may ask this question - what does it have to do with the logo? Probably everything:) ... Now you look at both these logos with a mindset of what I just told you in the above paragraph.

The biggest logo change everyone currently is talking about is the Jaguar's Cat going away, and instead, a simple font logo comes in. Even though Jaguar said why they did, what they did. I personally still don't understand why a 100-year-old brand would make such a radical turn. We will get into that during the later part of the article. But first, let's go fourteen years back and a similar story of another brand.

The year 2010, GAP, the popular clothing brand, decided to change its logo the reason for the change was that, like everyone else, they needed to be associated with the new age. So, they developed a logo which they believed to be modern, sexy and cool.

So what changed in this new logo

Gap’s highly recognisable logo, which represented the brand from 1990 to 2010, is a simple dark blue square featuring the ‘Gap’ name in white serif writing." was replaced with a new logo that featured a much smaller dark blue box and the ‘Gap’ name written in bold, black Helvetica font.

This new logo was designed by a leading NY-based creative agency, Laird and Partners, which holds a solid reputation in the field of branding and communication in the fashion industry. It is estimated to have cost around $100 million.

For consumer brands, the logo is an emotional touch point, and it's not easy to play with emotions.

The new logo didn't connect with the audience, and more than that, it triggered anger among the customers. Many of the customers became vocal about it on social media, and the biggest problem in today's social media age is bad news spread like wildfire with its own different narratives. There will be stories built up on this one incident, leading to many other predictions that brand executives might not even have thought of in their dreams.

Within just 24 hours, one online blog had generated 2,000 negative comments, a protesting Twitter account (now X) (@GapLogo) gathered 5,000 followers, and a “Make your own Gap logo” site went viral, collating almost 14,000 parody logo redesigns.

In most cases, all of this negativity around a brand reaches one tangible outcome, which is a loss in revenue. That's exactly what happened with GAP; there was a revenue dip.

The cleaver U-turn.

But GAP listened to its customers and quickly reinitiated its 1990 logo back. After which, they gave a statement on Facebook saying, “We are clear that we did not go about this in the right way […] we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd-sourcing. There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way” (Marka Hansen, President of Gap in North America at the time).

My personal experience

The other fast fashion brand which did a logo change, in which I personally felt betrayed, was Zara, maybe it's because of my Indian mindset??.

In India, most of us see Zara as a premium brand, and so do I??. I was a die-hard fan of Zara and still am. So, in 2019, Zara just changed their logo from separated letters to kind of running letters. Which somehow just killed the premium and made it look like a new generation brand.

Actually, Zara was right all along, that's what Zara stands for globally - a fast fashion brand, which essentially means new gen. So when that logo change happened, most of the people didn't feel betrayed because the logo resonated with what the brand stood for.

Coming back to today

Now, it's the Jaguar logo redesign which is the current talk of the town. Change in brand positioning, let's put it that way. The change from the traditional to modern - GenZ modern will be more apt for Jaguar.

Now the question is, GenZ, the buyer of Jaguar, are they even the right target audience.??

That's a million-dollar question. The JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) is famous for its British legacy DNA - The queen of England uses Range Rover, that's the kind of legacy Jaguar has.

Their iconic cat logo has been deeply ingrained in the hearts of brand lovers for quite some time. Even if you look at their previous ads - the cars had a character, mostly it had a sophistication in such a way it's used by people in charge.

Even this ad is a good example of that.

People buy a product not just for its functionality but for being associated with what it stands for.

Right now, that's the biggest criticism that people have raised - A brand that stood for its legacy and sophistication is right now looking like some fast-moving fashion clothing brand. That timeless design, James Bond characteristics, is gone with brand change.

"Are you even selling cars?" ~ Elon Musk

That's what the Tech Titan just commented when he saw the new Jaguar Branding and Logo.

Again, here, Jaguar just changed the branding as simple as a kid yanking the leaves in a garden. Their previous buyers bought a Jag for a reason, and that reason no longer seems to exist. Too much emotion is at stake, now let's see will it will be the next billion-dollar mistake! or out-of-the-blue a grand success.

What is the lesson learned here?

The brand is an emotion, and the logo is the first touch point of that emotion. If you want to change your logo - always go for subtle changes, or if you are looking at a radical change - then don't start with the logo instead, start with everything else, let's say change in your product design, ads nature, PR strategies - all of it and does it incrementally within a healthy time frame, by that time you will get the pulse of your existing customers and target audience with these new changes. And if you are getting the targetted outcome, then go for your great new logo unveil :)

Who am I to tell all this, just a curious man with a perspective??

Until my next article, signing off??

Manu Mohith