After 30 years, Best Buy has redesigned its logo as part of a rebranding effort.
So what.
According to Whit Alexander, newly minted chief marketing officer, “It’s really about building more aggressively toward serving customers and helping change lives with technology.”
Alexander shouldn’t assume people want technology to change their lives. Yet, the $42B retailer does so — and believes its new logo somehow reflects that.
Wrong.
First, the new logo is less distinct and memorable than its predecessor, and the yellow tag seems superfluous and misplaced.
Second, customers will not buy more merchandise because of the redesign.
Third, if you’ve read my books and previous articles, and watched my videos, you know that a logo is not a brand.
Branding is about customers — not companies, products, technologies, SKUs, or logos. Ignore this axiom at your peril.
Best Experience
So, a logo can represent a brand but never constitute one. Alas, Best Buy and too many other companies make this mistake every day of the week and will continue to make it.
Remember when Tiger Woods was on top of the world and then at the bottom? Now, he’s making a comeback. Yet, his logo never changed the whole time. He changed. His squeaky-clean, all-American brand changed.
The brand is the emotional connection customers have with the company, its customer-validated value proposition, a function of its track record of walking its talk.
Ultimately, the brand sets the company’s purpose and direction.
As long as customers feel that Best Buy is synonymous with best experience, rather than lowest prices, they will return repeatedly to purchase their electronics-based products and appliances, and encourage their friends to do likewise.
If, however, they fear Best Buy because its repair arm, Geek Squad, works with the FBI to snoop on computer files in search of child-porn, they will not.
Again, the logo is irrelevant here; changing it makes no sense.
Best Buy competes with Home Depot, Lowe’s, Fry’s, and Amazon. Other than occasionally finding better price & delivery, why should we shop at Best Buy? Untenable situation.
Best Buy should have kept the old logo, addressed the Geek Squad spying issue, and changed its model to offer unique value: narrower product offerings to fewer, richer customer segments, and more-convenient delivery, for example. That’s real rebranding.
Parting Advice to CEOs
Never confuse a logo with a brand, or a brand with a logo. If you do, you’ll waste your company’s cash and put it on a losing trajectory.
NEWSFLASH: Get over your disruption distraction. Customers hate disruption. Focus on improving their lives, not changing them.
The only way to succeed at branding — and rebranding — is to know your customers’ needs and wants, communicate to them in their language, and deliver unique value accordingly.
And, the only way to truly know your customers is to talk to them, meet them. Don’t rely on fake social media.
Meeting customers face-to-face is a key benefit to running a physical retail establishment like Best Buy. But, if your store is nothing more than a glorified warehouse, as most retailers are today, Amazon will eliminate it.
Finally, don’t waste money on a new logo, especially a bad one, thinking that you’ve created a new brand. You haven’t.
© 2018 Marc H. Rudov. All Rights Reserved.
About the Author
Marc Rudov is a branding advisor to CEOs,
producer of MarcRudovTV, and author of four books