'The New Indian Express' is the latest brand to switch to a new logo. There has been lots of logo changes in the last few years by media, industrial and banking brands. 
But the big question remains the same - Does a new logo open up new fortunes for the organization? Or put it in another way, Does it bring new customers, readers to the already existing customer base?
Last year, 2 major banks in India went for brand makeover. One for just the logo change and other for both name and logo change. Yes, you got it right, former is Canara Bank and latter is Axis(earlier UTI) bank.
Canara bank in its new logo - blue and yellow triangle interlocked, represents the strong between the bank and its customers
both inside and outside the organization. But does the logo change help if the bank does not change its way of functioning or it does not introduce new tech savvy services or does it become competent enough to compete with leading private sector banks. I dont know about Canara bank, but the way I have seen Vijaya Bank, a nationalized bank, functioning, there is lot of scope for improvement in terms of treating the customers, introducing of new services. Most of the public sector banks still operate in a bureaucratic way.
But, yes the logo change does help in changing the first impression someone will have next time when hear about that bank. UTI bank had to change its name to Axis bank for legal reasons. 
One of the most important thing to keep in mind during a image makeover is retaining the old reputation and enhancing upon that. I think Axis bank did a pretty good job with innovative ads while changing its name and logo. Just look at the below ad which features identical twins.
It is a completely different story when a media brand goes for a image makeover. Since it is the first look on any newspaper, magazine which makes your initial opinion to buy that or not, I think image change has a profound effect on the readers. Moreover, the newspaper's popularity lies in how it presents news,views to the public in an appealing way. Supporting this view is the fact that whenever a newspaper/magazine changes its logo/font it also changes the layout of the different news sections. The New Indian Express too follows this trend. One of the examples, I would like to quote is that of Sportstar, from The Hindu group.
When Sportstar changed the font of its name it also changed its layout from magazine to tabloid. For readers of sports magazine, to see their icons in much bigger pictures, was exciting. It changed the way of presenting the articles too. Also, from a fortnightly, it became a weekly! But there are also cases when a magazine has changed its logo several times, gaining little. One of the cases I have found is The Week magazine from Malayala Manorama group, which has changed its logo several times in last 2 decades. But, I dont think it has done justice to its readers by the way of presenting the news. Also, news presented sometimes is stale. Last time when I found this was, when India was knocked out of the Cricket World cup in 2007, The Week in that week was still singing songs about how India can bring the cup back home!
Regards
Raveesh
References:
Canara bank: new image - new services?
UTI Bank is rechristened Axis Bank
But the big question remains the same - Does a new logo open up new fortunes for the organization? Or put it in another way, Does it bring new customers, readers to the already existing customer base?Last year, 2 major banks in India went for brand makeover. One for just the logo change and other for both name and logo change. Yes, you got it right, former is Canara Bank and latter is Axis(earlier UTI) bank.
Canara bank in its new logo - blue and yellow triangle interlocked, represents the strong between the bank and its customers
both inside and outside the organization. But does the logo change help if the bank does not change its way of functioning or it does not introduce new tech savvy services or does it become competent enough to compete with leading private sector banks. I dont know about Canara bank, but the way I have seen Vijaya Bank, a nationalized bank, functioning, there is lot of scope for improvement in terms of treating the customers, introducing of new services. Most of the public sector banks still operate in a bureaucratic way.
But, yes the logo change does help in changing the first impression someone will have next time when hear about that bank. UTI bank had to change its name to Axis bank for legal reasons. 
One of the most important thing to keep in mind during a image makeover is retaining the old reputation and enhancing upon that. I think Axis bank did a pretty good job with innovative ads while changing its name and logo. Just look at the below ad which features identical twins.It is a completely different story when a media brand goes for a image makeover. Since it is the first look on any newspaper, magazine which makes your initial opinion to buy that or not, I think image change has a profound effect on the readers. Moreover, the newspaper's popularity lies in how it presents news,views to the public in an appealing way. Supporting this view is the fact that whenever a newspaper/magazine changes its logo/font it also changes the layout of the different news sections. The New Indian Express too follows this trend. One of the examples, I would like to quote is that of Sportstar, from The Hindu group.
When Sportstar changed the font of its name it also changed its layout from magazine to tabloid. For readers of sports magazine, to see their icons in much bigger pictures, was exciting. It changed the way of presenting the articles too. Also, from a fortnightly, it became a weekly! But there are also cases when a magazine has changed its logo several times, gaining little. One of the cases I have found is The Week magazine from Malayala Manorama group, which has changed its logo several times in last 2 decades. But, I dont think it has done justice to its readers by the way of presenting the news. Also, news presented sometimes is stale. Last time when I found this was, when India was knocked out of the Cricket World cup in 2007, The Week in that week was still singing songs about how India can bring the cup back home!Regards
Raveesh
References:
Canara bank: new image - new services?
UTI Bank is rechristened Axis Bank
change is always constant ... many companies have done this ... but Canara bank & UTI back hv marketed in a nice way.
ReplyDeletei guess newspapers have been doing this from many years ... the change frequency depends on the publishing house. the newspaper which don't have good number of subscribers do it more frequently.
coming to discussion w.r.t updated news in newspaper/magazine ... it's different discussion altogether. first of all do we read each and every article of newspaper? I read only editorial & local news section. I am updated with rest of news by google-news/blogs/tv.
Most of the newspaper sections are just news ... they don't say why this/that is happening ... in this respect, blogs score over the traditionally reported news.
Hi Shande,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. Regarding your comment on updated news, when a cover story is itself is stale there is no point in reading the magazine. Thats what happened in the example I quoted about The Week about India's world cup debacle.
Thanks
Raveesh
yeah i agree, that cover story would have been composed when Indian was still in the tournament. So magzine should discuss about the news which are not time dependent.
ReplyDelete