The other night, I was reading a marketing article in bed about the new Twitter logo when I looked over to see my wife reading a “before and after” plastic surgery article in US Weekly. Ironically, our articles had something in common … because what Twitter did — dropping its Twitter type and going to a single bird symbol — was tighten things up in the hopes of tweaking its image overall.
Logo redesigns prove that celebrities aren’t the only ones going under the knife these days. Brands constantly want to alter their images, and the changes range from subtle to dramatic. As a brand consultant, I’ve sat in more than one meeting where a client said, “We’d like to move away from our visual brand equity.” In these cases, we encourage clients to take a step back and look strategically at why they are making these moves — is it to appeal to a different audience or achieve a new business goal? Does it really make sense for their brands? I’m wondering if plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills do the same. Here are five examples of recent brand redesigns that brought celebrities' surgeries to mind:
NOSE JOB > J.C. PENNeY
To move away from the poor product expectations that became synonymous with its brand, J.C. Penney kept its font but abbreviated to initials placed in the upper left corner of a square. This rejiggering of parts reminds us of actresses whose nose jobs alter the very thing that made them accessible: their imperfections.