With the credit crunch in full swing, and banks and building societies being bought out and merged, it’s not surprising some more familiar brands are disappearing. The latest to join the ranks of the lost is Abbey, which along with Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley is being rebranded Santander, after the massive banking group which has taken the banks over in the last few years.
Although the Santander ‘flame’ logo has sat with the Abbey name for some time, the whole group will operate under a single brand – common across 40 countries.
So goodbye to some more old favourites (if you can have a favourite bank that is…) and hello to more brand consolidation…
Once upon a time, one logo for your brand was enough, but now it seems the way forward is to go mad with as many logos as humanly possible.
The conventional wisdom was to have a key logo – call it the ‘parent’ brand – and then perhaps several harmonious logos as sub-brands for products etc which worked with the host brand.
This wisdom is now in certain cases being turned on it’s head. One of the key guilty parties recently has been UKTV who have gone from a logo which worked across all it’s products/channels to re-naming and rebranding everything but the kitchen sink (…although this has probably been rebadged ‘Sink’…)
Where once was UKHistory, UKPeople, UKG2, you now have Yesterday, Blighty and Dave. All fine and good and whilst most of these channels now have strong and interesting identities on their own which probably do appeal to their target market, the question is how does their ‘look’ relate to their ‘parent’ brand?
Does it detract from it to the point of making it invisible? Is it a brilliant way to free a company from the problems and issues involved with creating a successful brand right across it’s portfolio of products or a cop out allowing someone to go crazy with the design box?
Genius or madness? Time will tell, so lettuce wait until the next rebrand (sorry…)