OddThinking

Some years ago, I lamented the sameness of a number of corporate logos. I considered writing a little web-game, which would invite the player to match the companies with their logos. A screen-shot might have looked somethink like this:

Match the logos on the left to their corresponding corporate brands on the right.
		Target
		Vodafone
		Bridgestone Donuts
		Lucent Technologies

I never did get around to it.

So today, when I noticed the new Unilever logo, I had to admit that I was a little surprised. The logo, released late last year, seemed fairly unconventional and even psychedelic for a staid multinational with a huge range of household products.

Visiting their animated explanation of the logo I found the typical branding guff. Each of the trinkets was carefully explained. I learnt that the bird symbolises freedom, hair next to hands symbolise softness, and the icon that I thought represented Shoemaker-Levy 9 actually represents clean and healthy. Strangely, spice represents fresh food to the Unilever folks. I associate it more with disguising the taste of unfresh food!

So, I thought it was a pretty cool logo, until I had each of the pieces pointed out to me by the Unilever web-site. Now I see it as reflecting a global brand that includes a lot of sub-brands that have nothing in common! Perhaps “unilever” is a Latin word meaning “forced, or levered, into one place”.

It turns out, a marketers at a recent Brand Summit made a somewhat similar point, arguing that Unilever shouldn’t really put their logo on all of their disparate products. Of course, as Vodafone was one of the sponsors of the summit, perhaps they were just jealous of the novel logo!