Interpreting the brand strategy adjustment behind Ogilvy’s LOGO change!

On June 6, Ogilvy announced the launch of a new brand visual identity system worldwide and the removal of its classic LOGO that had been used for 70 years. Would this be a wise move? What gains and losses will Ogilvy suffer from the brand strategy adjustment behind the change of LOGO? Let’s try to make some simple interpretations today.

First of all, is Ogilvy’s new LOGO good? This may be the easiest first question for us to start with.

From SDi’s point of view, we believe that the core indicators for judging the quality of LOGO design are nothing more than “recognizability” and “tactility”.

The existence of a LOGO is to build and maintain brand awareness, among which "recognition" is the basis of "knowledge", recognizability is the premise for a LOGO to be clearly distinguished and leave an unforgettable impression, and tangibility is the mission of the LOGO to express the core value of the brand.

On the surface, Ogilvy's change of logo is primarily aimed at adapting to the communication environment of mobile Internet and improving brand recognition. If we step out of the industry context and restore the event to the trend of many representative brands changing their LOGOs in recent years, I believe it will be easier to perceive this point.

For example, this pursuit of improving recognizability is not only reflected in the optimization of fonts by Four Seasons Hotels and Johnnie Walker, and the planarization of LOGO by MINI, but also in the abandonment and simplification of a series of visual elements by brands such as Haidilao , Logitech, and Meizu.

More specifically, for Ogilvy, the decision to abandon its unique signature font and replace it with a more "modern" and universal compound font is more about overcoming the "cultural" recognition barriers faced by the brand than overcoming the visual recognition barriers caused by the fragmented environment of mobile Internet .

This inevitably reminds people of McLuhan's "the medium is the message". From a longer-term perspective, it is not the content (Ogilvy), but the media form of writing this content that will have a more profound impact on people's cognition.

Due to the huge changes in the media environment, the new generation of brand decision makers have gradually moved away from the creative era of perceiving the beauty of humanity through handwriting. The continuous shrinking of this cultural soil has made Ogilvy's old LOGO face an increasingly insurmountable cultural gap and increasingly high "translation" costs in front of the new generation native to "electronic culture", which became the first motivation for Ogilvy to change its LOGO.

Then let’s look at the second core dimension of LOGO design – tactility.

Nowadays, when talking about brand logo changes, the media always likes to ask users - "Do you prefer the new design or the old design?" In fact, whether from the perspective of analyzing a brand or from the perspective of understanding the user's position, such questions lack practical significance.

This is because, on the one hand, if we only look at the design without analyzing it from the perspective of brand strategy, we cannot judge whether a logo is good or bad; on the other hand, based on psychological research, if we ask the audience about their likes and dislikes when the logo is changed, nine out of ten people will still say that the old logo is better. This is because the old version has accumulated emotional connections with users over the years, so that the "tactility" of the new logo will only gradually appear after a very long adaptation period.

The LOGO is the basic expression of a brand. Changing the LOGO always means an adjustment in the brand strategy. But what is "brand strategy"?

From the perspective of discovery marketing theory (SDi), the essence of marketing is "creating value" and "creating cognition". Therefore, what value a brand should create for consumers and what kind of cognition should be created around this value is the only strategy a brand has.

From this perspective, Ogilvy’s new logo should represent decision-makers’ understanding of Ogilvy’s current core values ​​and indicate the perception that the brand hopes to create in the future.

What could it be?

It is necessary to first discuss the core brand value expressed by the old version of Ogilvy’s LOGO. Because only by clarifying the ins and outs and tracing back to the source to see the differences in the core brand value before and after, can we have a better basis to analyze the pros and cons of the new LOGO design.

The old version of Ogilvy's LOGO is the signature of advertising giant David Ogilvy . In my opinion, this LOGO triggers the audience's cognition of Ogilvy's "creative perspective" in the most concise and intuitive way. This creative concept was repeatedly refined by Ogilvy himself in practice and represented the core value of Ogilvy for quite a long time.

More specifically, in my opinion, Ogilvy’s “creative view” is mainly composed of the following three important cornerstones:

1. Tell the facts

Just like the famous long title David Ogilvy once created for Rolls-Royce cars :

"At 60 mph, the loudest noise on this new Rolls-Royce comes from its electric clock."

Impressing consumers through rich factual details is David Ogilvy's most distinctive creative feature.

Ogilvy opposed "literary" advertisements with flowery language but empty content, and proposed "don't try to disguise advertisements as literary works." And emphasized:

“Avoid superlatives, generalities and cliches. Be specific and factual.”

If we observe carefully, we will find that this creative style is faithfully reflected in many of Ogilvy's works. For example, let’s take the Rolls-Royce ad as an example. Below the title is a long copy of hundreds of words filled with detailed descriptions. The first five of them are written like this:

It is not difficult to see from these texts that Ogilvy's copywriting is not "long for the sake of being long", but emphasizes grasping details while being concise and comprehensive, providing readers with rich information that far exceeds the number of words itself.

2. Focus on research

So what is the solid foundation that enables Ogilvy’s advertising to persist in “telling the truth”? It should be said that this was mainly due to the fact that Ogilvy, who had worked in market research in his early years, also attached great importance to the attitude and habit of research after founding Ogilvy.

Ogilvy once left us the golden words "Advertising should tell the facts, and research should precede preparation of plans". He also wrote the famous "18 Miracles of Advertising Research", which, in my opinion, are still deeply inspiring for today's consumer research and user insights .

For example, when creating the advertisement for Helena Rubinstein Cream, through research, Ogilvy clarified the advertising promise of the product: "The cleanser can penetrate deep into the pores", and based on this, he proposed the epoch-making expression of "deep cleansing", creating the unprecedented success of the product.

Ogilvy’s creative view of emphasizing research is not appreciated by most people today. I think one of the important reasons is that he did not provide us with any “shortcuts”, but basically all hard work.

For example, when creating the Rolls-Royce advertisement, Ogilvy spent a full three weeks reading car information in detail before identifying the key detail worthy of becoming a headline from a large amount of material. In my opinion, it is precisely these "stupid methods" that have shaped the huge success of Ogilvy and Ogilvy.

3. Big Ideas

In addition to the above two points, Ogilvy’s view on creativity must also be supplemented by the concept of “big ideas” he proposed.

Ogilvy once said: "Unless your advertising comes from a big idea, it will be as quiet as a ship sailing in the night." He also emphasized that "only ideas that can be used for 30 years can be called big ideas", and he praised the "cowboy" created by Leo Burnett for Marlboro as such a "big idea".

What is Ogilvy's big idea?

In SDi’s view, big ideas are those that present the core values ​​of a brand in a highly condensed way and are able to touch the “soul” of the brand. "Big creativity" is an important basis of Ogilvy's brand image theory. Only with this point can the "brand image theory" be applied vividly and vividly.

Based on the above three points, in summary, the core value that Ogilvy’s old LOGO wants to express, at the functional level, is mainly manifested as an ability to touch the soul of the brand through "big creativity" based on in-depth research, and then tell a good brand story to customers with the simple style of "telling the facts"; and at the ideological level, it corresponds to a humanistic sentiment and craftsman mentality of striving for excellence and treading on thin ice.

It is the fusion of these two that constitutes Ogilvy’s core value, and is also the cognitive object that its old version of the LOGO directly points to.

If I were to summarize it in one sentence, I think that "telling brand stories in a humanistic way" was Ogilvy's core value in the past, the brand's own "big idea", and a cognitive advantage that the brand should not deviate from.

However, the reality that cannot be avoided is that due to a series of subjective and objective reasons, this core value of Ogilvy has encountered great challenges in the new era.

For example, in the era of traditional advertising, the customer perception research centered on print and television advertising, which Ogilvy paid particular attention to, and the successful paradigm of developing advertising for clients based on these researches, have been repeatedly snatched away by Internet companies as new ways of information interaction continue to emerge. The ability to come up with “big ideas” and “tell the truth” has also been weakened by the continuous fragmentation of corporate marketing functions and the diversification and fragmentation of media forms.

Advertising agencies are losing the ability to define the core value of a brand from a "complete" perspective, and are having to continuously cede the market, which they should have dominated, to consulting firms and a variety of social marketing agencies.

What is more important is that, judging from the brand strategy behind Ogilvy’s change of LOGO, a better approach seems to be to inherit the core value of the brand and focus on “telling the brand story in a humanistic way under new technical conditions” to continue its cognitive advantage. Unfortunately, we did not read this from the design of the new LOGO.

According to media reports , Ogilvy interpreted the debut of the new LOGO as the brand's "tracing back to its roots and creating something new", but from a design point of view, apart from retaining the spelling of "Ogilvy" and protecting this most valuable brand mental asset, the new design does not actually have much meaning of "tracing back to its roots".

From the perspective of “creating something new”, Ogilvy officially stated: “The new LOGO represents flexibility, collaboration and connection”. This is indeed in line with the brand’s strategic adjustment direction of “One Ogilvy” and is also reflected in the use of linked characters in the LOGO. But is expressing “flexibility, collaboration and connection” a wise choice? We think the answer is debatable for the following reasons:

(1) This goes beyond everyone’s past understanding of Ogilvy, and it is impossible to find strong support from the brand’s genes. It is almost like telling a new story. This may lead to a period of discontinuity in the audience’s understanding of the brand’s core values, so a larger budget will be needed to support the building of new cognition.

(2) This is closer to an industry concept applicable to public relations communication, but is not suitable as a core value to guide brand expression including logo design. On the one hand, it lacks the tangibility of expressions such as "telling a good brand story" and "making the brand more meaningful", and requires more information to make people understand; on the other hand, "flexibility, collaboration and connection" are also completely "functional" expressions, lacking the emotional value of the brand. This makes the new LOGO with this purpose more dependent on people's logical thinking, rather than allowing the target audience to "understand" it in an instant.

(3) The emphasis on “flexibility, collaboration and connection” tends to weaken Ogilvy’s traditional advantage of “humanity” and instead enters the field of strength of technology companies. As a result, the resistance to reconstructing brand awareness is high and the difficulty is high.

(4) Although the brand has proposed the “One Ogilvy” strategy, business integration does not necessarily mean that clear brand core values ​​have been formed; on the contrary, what exactly is the brand’s core value in the new era? We don't see any exciting answers from the information we have so far.

at last

In general, the change of Ogilvy's new LOGO has improved the brand's recognizability among the new generation of target audiences, reduced cognitive costs, and is more conducive to brand communication in the information environment of the mobile Internet. This is the merit of this LOGO change that deserves recognition.

However, before a clear awareness of the core brand value of the new era is formed and a convincing value proposition is put forward, abandoning a classic design that has been used for 70 years and has accumulated huge cognitive advantages is not enough for us to call this move "hasty" without knowing Ogilvy's next move, but at least for now, it lacks a strong enough strategic basis.

A handwritten Ogilvy logo is the great idea that David Ogilvy left to the world. Its significance is no different from the "Think Different" left by Steve Jobs . If the result of this logo change and brand strategy adjustment is that the "humanistic spirit" that Ogilvy has always been proud of is diluted, then it is certain that no matter what cognition the new strategy aims to build, such a strategic adjustment will ultimately be counterproductive.

In the new era when the core values ​​of brands have undergone significant changes, Ogilvy does need to make adjustments to a series of brand expressions. However, the premise of all this should be to return to the research spirit that David Ogilvy valued, combining the customer needs of the new era with the brand's DNA to conduct a deeper exploration of its own value.

A brand that can stick to its original intention and keep pace with the times in its expression may be more in line with customers' future expectations.

The author of this article @宇见 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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