The Power of a Logo

UPDATE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN CROSS POSTED AT THE NEW BRANDSTORY BLOG WHERE I NOW WRITE. I'D BE HONORED IF YOU WOULD CLICK THROUGH AND ADD IT TO YOUR BOOKMARKS.

Does your logo get the reaction you want? Do customers think differently or act differently when they see your logo as opposed to your competitor? Should it?

While I firmly believe that a logo can trigger an emotional response attached to a brand, this goes a little farther than I would have expected: According to this post in the Wall Street Journal Business Technology blog, researchers at Duke have found that exposure to a particular logo (in this case, Apple or IBM) can result in behavioral changes. People who were flashed the Apple logo for 30 milliseconds (too fast to be consciously seen) performed more creatively than those who saw the IBM logo.

You can read the study here.

This begs the question--will thinking about the Nike logo make you run faster? Will thinking of the Harvard University logo make you smarter? Will pondering the Weight Watchers logo help you lose weight? Sign me up as a test subject for all of the above.

Others offer thoughts about the power of Apple's logo to help you think differently:
Brand Noise.
Fake Steve Jobs.

Comments

[Stefan Stoykov]

Nonsense. Hadn't there been the stories of the companies behind those logos, nobody would have been manipulative enough to publish such a naive study. Apple's logo is designed better, but flashing it for a fraction of a second before my eyes doesn't make me any smarter. There's also the context where it happens---maybe in the 1980s this logo of Apple's would have looked stupid. Also, I don't like most of Apple's commercials, but the logo certainly looks good on a Mac.

[rob]

Stefan-

While I appreciate your skepticism, you don't really make a substantive argument against the research. Was the methodology flawed? Did the test subjects not perform as stated? Was the whole thing faked? Yes, it may be hard to believe that a logo (and more particularly the subtle associations we make with logos) can affect behavior, these researchers noted measurable performance differences based solely on exposure to a logo. Do you have data that says otherwise?

Yes, the stories behind the logos play a part in changing behavior. Click through to the actual study and read it. Very interesting. But that's the point of a logo, to represent all of the associations that consumers have with a particular product or service. The apple logo represents not just the name of the company, but the ideas represented by the company, including innovation and creativity. The powerful stories represented by these logos no doubt played a part in their selection for the study.

I've heard lots of people claim that advertising doesn't work on them. That no matter what marketing they are exposed to, they make up their own minds. Yet, each year businesses spend billions of dollars to influence the behavior of potential customers. Like it or not, marketing/advertising works. And it works well--whether we're talking about television ads or the simple exposure to a logo, it can change behavior in measurable ways. If it doesn't affect you, you are a very rare breed indeed.

If you have issues with the way these studies were conducted or can argue that the conclusions are wrong, I'm all ears...

-rm

[Latika]

Interesting to know.