It's not how big your logo is, it's how you use it
- 20 hours ago
- 10 min read
People don’t fall in love with logos. They fall in love with what those logos come to represent. So here's how to use a logo effectively instead of just pumping it up bigger.
Alright innuendo aside, "Make the logo bigger" is a common feedback request that many designers, branding and marketing people receive. And while it can indeed be the right call, is there anything else we can do for your brand to stand out, be recognised, come to mind and be remembered more, effectively? Or maybe even loved that much that they'd be happy to pay 5x more to wear your logo.
The answer is, absolutely yes, and here's how.
Logo placement
I covered this in a previous article but logo placement, and size can help ensure your brand is not just recognised, but also thought of again when needed.
Packaging
Unless you're coming to market with a completely new type of product category that requires customer education, make your product name the second thing a customer notices, not the first. Which means in terms of hierarchy, your logo should be the largest element on your packaging... Yes, make it bigger. But also, it should be placed anywhere in the top half or middle of your product packaging. This improves your brand's chance of being remembered, given it's the most prominent thing someone sees.
This becomes an advantage for your brand in three ways. The first being your customer can easily spot your brand again. The second is your brand is then recognised away from the packaging in other forms of marketing, like an ad, to keep your brand top of mind and link that association back to the product they've already seen or tried.
Thirdly this becomes a big advantage when you expand your product range, especially into a different category, where early brand recognition of a new product can dramatically improve the liklihood of a purchase. As a study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia analysed purchasing behaviour from roughly 60,000 households across 98 brand extensions and found that familiarity and prior usage of a brand significantly increased the likelihood of buying that brand in a new category. Stating that:
"Purchasing a brand in one category makes a consumer, on average, 2.4 times as likely to purchase the same brand in a second category compared to a consumer who purchased a different brand in the original category."
This is extremely compelling for the rationale to ensure people remember your brand and knows the product. But to make it clear, the reason consumers are 2.4 times more likely to buy a brand in a new category isn’t because they recognise the logo alone. It’s because they’ve learned what that logo represents through repeated experiences with the brand. However, if they can't recall the brand, then that becomes a friction point for your brand, right?
Signage
Many brands use a logo like a full-stop at the end of a sentence, and by that I mean, placing the logo at the bottom of a piece of visual communication. So when it comes to signage or billboard advertising positioned at eye-level, this becomes a problem.
Why? Because it can be obscured easily by people walking past, cars driving past, park benches, bins. The simple point here is to start with the logo first, at the top, so that if only one thing is seen, it's your logo, rather than your message or any other visuals.
Conversely, if the signage is above eyeline, like in a billboard mounted high up on a building, then put the logo at the bottom.
Recognised without words
There are many ways of designing a logo. Some have the brand name written alongside a unique symbol. Some just have the unique symbol. While others just use a word. There's no real right or wrong as there are just as many word only logos as there logos with a unique symbol.
Additionally, there are very few brands that just use a unique symbol only, like Apple, Mastercard and Shell. The reason for this is that this is really difficult, as it has become the ultimate pinnacle for a brand is to have a symbol that doesn't require words to know what the name of the brand is. Many brands strive towards this goal, especially when reaching a global audience where iconography can transcend various spoken languages.
So the point here is that the importance of a logo, is not just making it bigger so that it's more visible. It's to consider developing a logo that has a unique symbol, also known as a logomark, so that it carries inherent meaning without needing to communicate what you do, or even the name. Why? Here's three reasons:
Less to remember
We all know that the less information we have to remember the easier it is to actually remember. Be it 3 items on a shopping list, versus 30 items. Or in the case of branding, less visual elements to remember and recognise. This is why one-word, one-colour brands with simple and unique icons become far more effective than those that have more details. It requires less frequency of your brand showing up to bake that into a consumers memory, and as such, more likelihood to instil the association between your what your brand offers for them to need you, and your logo that brings that association to mind. This is also why it becomes imperative to nail your brand's positioning first. To be clear about what your brand is going to be easily remembered for before you go making a symbol to represent that.
If you can't show your full logo
As most brands carry a logo consisting of a unique symbol and word(s) for their brand name, displaying all of that can limit the chances of recognition because, wait for it... It means your logo needs to be smaller. Yes, in an instance like a social media profile image, if you put a full logo that is horizontally wide, it becomes tiny. Instead, use your symbol only and it can be displayed the largest it possibly can be. Additionally, your brand name will be displayed alongside the profile image, so there's no need for your brand name part of your logo to be present.
Recognised without a word
Levis the jeans brand, among other brands that sponsor stadiums hosting the FIFA World Cup are currently experiencing a different form of their logo not being able to be displayed. Though in Levis' case they were able to cover up their logo in a way that still maintained the shape of their logo.
Now there's a bit of conjecture about this, in terms of whether consumers would actually recognise their logo at the stadium when it's covered by a white sheet. I'm not for a second suggesting most consumers would...very little is more likely. However this is being used as a moment for Levis in their marketing to educate consumers of their logo shape in an advertising and social campaign. To further improve their chances over time of using that shape to be recognisable in its own right.
This effort is also reflective of how logos, especially logomarks are made to begin with. Often in black and white on a screen or with pencil on paper. To strip away the name and colour when designing it, means the logo can still be effective without either of those two things.
Many brands have this, while other brands default to showing the full logo so that it's never mistaken. But if the goal is to make a logo more effective with the least information possible, it requires far greater frequency with which the logo appears for it to be effective in such a minimal form. So it doesn't mean the logo needs to be bigger, it just needs to show up far more to become effective.
Context is overlooked
There’s always this misconception for startups that their logo needs to show or say what they do because no one knows them. To be totally frank with you, it’s the quickest way to be undervalued in your market. As most logos that say what you do in your brand name are too long to remember, and if it uses a common symbol that represents the category or service (like a dripping tap for a plumber) your brand just blends into the crowd of other similar small businesses.
But here’s the thing, which is a constant reminder if you’ve heard it before, that a logo is identification not communication. You create meaning in your logo by everything else you do to create those associations. Just like we know a red octagon shape means STOP, no matter if it says the word on it.
What’s also important to remember is that your logo is rarely, if ever, shown in isolation. A customer isn’t choosing your brand over another by looking at a grid of logos of different competitors in your market. They’re also not just seeing your logo on its own on a page or sign. There’s always context and context matters to help a consumer understand your brand.
If your product is on a supermarket shelf next to other competitors selling a similar item, they’ll know what type of product brand you are, let alone the product name or description below your logo.
If your logo is on the side of a trades van, you’re probably not just going to have your logo on the side of your vehicle, you’ll also have some other info that list your services and contact information.
If you’re advertising your brand on a billboard, your messaging and imagery will likely clarify what is being offered - if it’s not, you’re being too clever or vague in your advertising and it’s not the fault of your logo.
Not to mention as I’ve said in a few of my articles recently, logos are the least effective distinctive asset a brand can use. Where a mascot and sound or bit of music is between 7-8 times more effective than a logo or brand colours. This should be enough encouragement to have and use more than just your logo when putting your brand out there for consumers to recognise and experience.
The point of your logo is simply to identify that this is your brand, not a competitor. Everything else you do will give it context and meaning. Be it your product, packaging, placement, messaging, imagery and other visual or sonic elements. Making the logo bigger won’t help this any more than it being easily visible. What makes it more effective is context.
Create that meaning
As I’ve said a few times already in this article, your logo carries meaning. Not in how it communicates what you do by how the logo looks, but by the associations you develop that form this thing we call a brand, and the logo carries that meaning when you see it as a name or symbol.
See, a brand is not the company. We often conflate the two, but in reality, a brand is the conduit between your customers and company. Whether realised or not, i\t’s the reason you pick one product or service over another that could be near identical. It’s the thing that distinguishes one offering from another beyond features or benefits. It’s a cue that drives intent. Or as I call it, a captivating moment of connection.
A brand is also not a logo, like many branding and marketing people shout from the rooftops over and over again. For a logo to be effective and valuable, it needs to carry meaning. And if there’s no meaning to be had that creates a compelling reason to buy, that logo will be ignored and the offering becomes a basic commodity that is easily replaceable. Which I hazard a guess is not what you want, right?
This is why branding and marketing people talk about brand equity. A value placed beyond the utility of the product or service. You can buy a BYD/Yangwang U7 electric vehicle that has very comparable specs to the new Ferrari Luce electric car. The difference is there will be people that will be happy to pay 6.5 times more for the Ferrari badge.
To shift the example to a more accessible example, people are happy to pay 5 times more for a plain white Nike t-shirt that costs $50, instead of a $5 plain white t-shirt from Target. The difference is the embroidered logo on the breast of the Nike t-shirt. It’s not because the Nike logo is big on the shirt either, it’s a 5cm wide swoosh. It’s because that logo carries meaning, it carries status, it carries a story that people connect with. To ‘just do it’, the ‘everybody’s an athlete’ mentality, looking cool instead of cheap, to wear what your sporting idol wears. All these things are meaning that Nike has not only created on its own dime, but so have consumers.
See when I think of McDonald’s I think about my first big birthday party in primary school as a kid that I had at my local McDonald’s with all my school friends and family. I also think about family road trips where we’d often stop in at a McDonald’s as an easy food-fix on the go. Or more recently, taking my kids to a McDonald’s for a Happy Meal treat. I created that meaning for myself that comes to mind every time I see the McDonald’s logo. Which comes back to that captivating moment of connection of a brand being that conduit between customer and company.
So creating a logo is one thing. Making it bigger does in many cases make it easier to spot. But most companies aren’t taking the time to consider what a customer is actually going to think when they spot their logo beyond what it looks like. Because I’ll tell you now, a logo isn’t great just because of how it looks, it’s great because of what it represents to customers. This comes from effective positioning so that customers do actually know what to remember you for so that you come to mind rather than a competitor when needed. This comes from effective marketing to create a product/service that meets a need, place it in the time/place that it’s needed and experienced, price it at an appropriate level that reflects the need and promote it so that people remember to think of it when needed.
This is what shapes the meaning behind a logo, rather than baking that into how the logo looks and having the restraint to not need to use your logo ineffectively. It is challenging to do and the reality of it all is that it takes a long time to actually achieve it. But it’s a more effective way to create equity in your brand so that consumers might actually love buying it or at least have a strong, positive association towards it so that they choose it when needed and buy it again and again.
There’s no need to overinflate the importance of your logo. It’s one piece of the greater brand that consumers will remember, identify with and buy from. But it’s also only one piece of what identifies your team and your offer. Far too many businesses obsess over their logo as the only thing that is needed to brand their business. But now is your chance to give your brand a shot at better branding to do more with your logo and more than just a logo to see better business success. It’s not how big it is, it’s how you use it.
