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…)