Wal-Mart: To change or not to change, that was the question.

The word “branding” comes from the cattle ranching days of the Old West. The branding of livestock was a rigidly-enforced practice that helped to keep life peaceful and orderly.

 

All cattle look pretty much the same. Without a brand, no cowboy would know whose cattle are whose. Determining ownership would be a nightmare.

 

In the American West, cattle still graze freely and branding allows ranchers to easily identify their animals especially during the fall roundup.

 

(Of course, some ranchers keep their herds on fenced lots and in that case branding isn’t required but is often done anyway. And in business, if you have no competition you don't need a brand either.)

 

A brand is the special mark or identifying design owned by a rancher. Branding occurs when an owner’s branding iron is heated to red hot in a fire and is pressed against the side of the animal. Not a particularly pleasurable process for the animal but essential for the rancher.

 

 

In the marketplace, brands and branding are as essential as they are on the ranch. Without a brand, consumers would have difficulty differentiating one product from another. But while any company can put a mark on the side of a package, that doesn’t make the mark a powerful brand. Brands are only powerful when you can burn that same mark into the mind of the consumer as well. Ouch!

 

Burning the consumer’s mind is the key detail many companies miss. They think branding is putting their name and logo on the package. But that is only half the answer. Making a branding iron is the easy part. Holding the consumer down and burning that brand into the mind is the hard part.

 

The good news is that once you have burned your brand in the mind of the consumer it is practically permanent. An established brand is difficult to change and hard to forget. Unless you keep changing what the brand stands for to the point of no recognition.

 

It is important to keep the look of your branding iron consistent over time. Constant or drastic change can be a brand-killer.

 

(Of course, if nobody knows your brand, you can change it all you want. Marlboro was initially a women’s cigarette which was rebranded with cowboy imagery.)

 

It was no trouble for Marlboro to change from a woman’s to a man’s cigarette but they can’t change from the cowboys without dire consequences. Marlboro has wisely stuck to the same imagery, look and logo for over 50 years.

 

 

Why do companies want to change the look of their brand?  One reason is to keep the brand current and fresh. Or to attempt to change the position of the brand.

 

Making subtle changes over time to a brand is fine. It allows you to keep the logo fresh and up-to-date. The UPS logo has undergone 4 changes over 100 years but it still retains the same look, feel and most importantly the same color, brown. Consumers have hardly noticed the changes.

 

 

Sometimes a logo may not be perfect, but sudden, radical change to a well-known brand can be jarring, disturbing and destructive. This is the case with the latest changes to the Wal-Mart logo.

 

Since the launch of the company in 1962, Wal-Mart has made many subtle changes. But for the most part it has stuck to its traditional uppercase type. The brand is currently the world’s largest retailer meaning that its logo is burned into the minds of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

 

 

So what did they just announce? A drastic change.  Not a small change, but a change that makes me cringe.

 

To hyphenate or not to hyphenate? Uppercase or lowercase? Star or no star? Dark blue or light blue? One color or two colors? Let’s change everything!

 

One change would have been radical enough, but making all these changes at once will  disconnect Wal-Mart from its past. Which for the world’s largest retailer is stupid.

 

In general, it’s preferable to avoid hyphens in names and to use upper and lowercase letters rather than all-caps. But for Wal-Mart, its name and its typography are so well known that changing everything at once is dangerous.

 

What is even worse is the yellow starburst that Wal-Mart is adding to the end of its name. What the heck is that? I’ll tell you what it is. It is an attempt to make Wal-Mart look like a environmentally-friendly company and a big-box store that cares despite a record of union blocking and community commoditizing.

 

Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Gardner said: "This logo update is simply a reflection of the refreshed image of our stores and our renewed sense of purpose of helping people save money so they can live better."

 

Really? I think this logo update is an attempt by Wal-Mart to try and change the minds of consumers. To try to convince them that Wal-Mart has a renewed sense of purpose.

 

Has anybody mentioned Wal-Mart’s renewed sense of purpose to you? No one has mentioned it to me.

 

Changing the logo won’t change the brand in the mind. The only way to change what people think about Wal-Mart is to generate favorable publicity. The company has been making progress in this area with a more media-friendly CEO, Lee Scott, and by promoting energy-efficient light bulbs and a discounted drug program. I congratulate Wal-Mart for their PR, but question their radical logotype redesign.

 

For consumers who had problems with Wal-Mart’s brand the new logo won’t change their minds, slapping lipstick on a pig does little good either. For consumers who love to shop and save money at Wal-Mart (and there are a lot more of these consumers) the new logo is likely to confuse and frustrate. It is like your wife coming home with a new Mohawk, she might hope it makes her suddenly look young and rebellious but her family knows nothing could be further from the truth.

Comments

[Heidi]

I agree with two things: bad design, and the logo isn't going to change the general perception of the store. People who shop there for "price, price, price," as Erik Johnson commented, won't care about the logo. To the disenchanted, the logo change is very suspect because it doesn't correlate to a change in attitude or action by the company.

I do think that as an identity the new logo waters down the "big" feel of Wal-Mart which to me has been a big part of the brand. Why not make the transition more subtle with the yellow burst in the middle of the name, like the star replaced the hyphen? (Of course, with the star there, I never knew if I should hyphenate it or if that was just a logo thingy.)

Other than "big," my perception of their brand would be "impersonal." One big box store after another, all looking the same. I'm guessing that Wal-Mart wanted the new logo to look friendly. Which it does, I guess, but it's too late in the game to be fresh -- too many other companies, new and old, have "green"-ish logos now.

I realize that the Wal-Mart designers (or the firm they hired) had it tough -- it's no easy feat to brand or re-brand such a large chain of stores that carries such a variety of goods. All the more reason to go slow, and have a really good reason to change it.

[Martin Calle]

So if a brand is something that a rancher puts on his cattle so that other ranchers or rustlers don't steal them why do CPG companies brand their products? So competitors or brand rustlers won't steal them. Yet in many ways products (cattle) in most categories (pastures) are the same - commodities - and like cattle heavily price driven categories at that, ground roast coffees, disposable diapers, edible oils, etc.)
So if the rancher (cattle owner) wants to sell more of his cattle (brand) at auction (chain grocery and drug stores for example) what must he or she do? Make a better product? A steer is a steer. Meat on the hoof is meat on the hoof. And a better product would screw up the margins.
I believe that legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden had it right when he said, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." These ranchers (marketers) have been raising cattle (brands) the same way year after year. The feed (gathered and measured data) comes from the same vendors year after year. It seems to me that the only thing that would make a difference would be to create new knowledge - knowledge that has never previously existed to be gathered and measured. After all, most gathered and measured (cattle/brand feed) data comes from consumer survey panelists who answer questions for points and prizes - they don't even get cash anymore. An if it's done online, you can't even look the panelist in the eye to see if he or she is telling the truth (suspect data). That feed could be anything! I believe creating new knowledge, that which is yet to exist to gather and measure would sire an uber brand. (It made Folgers worth $1.6 billion when auctioned to a brand rancher in Orrville, Ohio. Then everyone else could once again rush to converge on the same position (pasture) saying the same things about themselves (branding) their own way. The symbol (brand) might look different, but the meat inside is pretty much the same (commoditization). To continue doing things the same way would be illogical because no matter how much you study the past (entrenched or shifting consumer habits and practices or beliefs) it will never give you everything you need for the present. Does anyone actually believe that closing a thousand stores, recipe dissemination, a few novelty fro-you drinks and user generated input from MyStarbucksIdea.Com is going to turn Starbucks around? No. It's just trimming the fat to get ready for an auction where Starbucks is the cattle and rancher Schultz can cash out. “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others do.” That way the auctioneer (Costco) can't tell the rancher (P&G) how to breed the cattle (Tide). It's called differentiation, which today, can only come from new knowledge. Jeez, I think I've been hanging around CPG companies too long. Starting to sound cynical like George Parker. Man Laura, your posts make me think too hard. Stream of consciousness hurts! Difficult to string all my cynicism together and make sense.

[Dileep]

Hi Laura,

Hope u r doin fine! Got your mail and read the blog too!..Logo seems to be very minutive part in case of WaL- Mart, whtr they want to be insync wid something new, logo just can't revitalize!
I would say Hutch to Vodafone transition in India was taken with very calculative risk...keeping the "chinese pug' as the symbol of relationship..vodafone India ads are still ringing the same story which Hutch was telling!.. "Pug" is not part of the logo...but they dint dare to do away wid it..WAl - MART is not evrything about logo-- more being EDLP or evryday low price! and availability!

[Erik Johnson]

I agree, to many changes all at once. At first I didn't know if the image was an asterisk, flower, sun, or just a silly image. And why is it on the right side??? I think for Walmart the all caps did work because it related to the sheer size of the stores, very similar with Target and Kohls. Subtle changes over time is the best way to go, well said Laura.

[BIG Kahuna]

Normally I would agree with you 100%. But in this case I can't.

Walmart is all about price. People shop in their stores because of price. They have no other identity other than price. Price, price, price.

Therfore they could have a big pile of dog ________ as a logo and it wouldn't matter to their target audience who shop their. All they want is a low price.

Walmart has no meaning or reason of being other than to save some money for price conscience people.

Most of their customers won't even realize Walmart's changed their logo. They'll be too busy looking at their savings on the receipt.

[Rajesh Aithal]

In India we observe many of the older companies going in for a change in the look of their brands. The most recent one being the Godrej group, which is more than 100 year old. The logic is that though the brand is well know but the younger generation finds it difficult to connect with it. Which actually makes sense, but I don't see a very strong logic behind the Wal-Mart's change.

[Rajesh Aithal]

In India we observe many of the older companies going in for a change in the look of their brands. The most recent one being the Godrej group, which is more than 100 year old. The logic is that though the brand is well know but the younger generation finds it difficult to connect with it. Which actually makes sense, but I don't see a very strong logic behind the Wal-Mart's change.

[Rajesh Aithal]

In India we observe many of the older companies going in for a change in the look of their brands. The most recent one being the Godrej group, which is more than 100 year old. The logic is that though the brand is well know but the younger generation finds it difficult to connect with it. Which actually makes sense, but I don't see a very strong logic behind the Wal-Mart's change.