Word marks vs logos, does it make a difference?
Apart from the latest celebrity scandal, the one thing that is almost guaranteed to generate newspaper headlines and result in people moaning and that’s a brand redesign. Just think back to March when Toblerone was forced to redesign their logo and remove the Matterhorn (now that the chocolate bar isn’t made in Switzerland). The internet was awash with numerous articles, and shoppers were adamant that they would never eat Toblerone again. Three months later and I doubt that most people can even notice the difference between the packs. But that’s not to say that brand logos aren’t important.
For example, when it comes to memorability, shoppers have a stronger memory for brand logos than they do for brand namesi. This makes complete sense. After all, researchers have shown that people have a fantastic ability to recognise pictures. Flash an image Infront of someone, and several days later they’re ability to recognise if they’ve seen it before with 90% accuracyii. Try to do the same thing with words and people just manage itiii. This has led some commentators to argue that word marks don’t make for great logos (hint, probably best not to mention this to Google…) but this overlooks a number of key facts.
Firstly, it assumes that we read a word mark as if it’s any other word. They assume that our brain processes a wordmark as if it’s any other word. When we see a wordmark, such as the Google logo, we don’t process it as a word, we recognise it as a picture. This is an important distinction because our brains process words and pictures differentlyiv. Our brain process images quicker than wordsv (but not the 60,000 that is often cited), and in most cases we pay more attention to images rather than words.vi
How to optimise a logo or wordmark?
But this shouldn’t be taken as evidence that wordmarks don’t make effective logos. A lot of the time it comes down to the situation. If you are trying to introduce a new brand into the marketplace, shoppers find it easier to process a wordmark than an image-based logovii. This is because when we’re unfamiliar with the brand, we’re hunting for clues to help us understand the brand. What is it? What do they do? What should I expect from them? While a picture-based logo will give us some of these clues, we find it easier to interpret this from words, assuming the brand name says something about the company (e.g., Flash or Lyft). However, once we become familiar with a brand and we’ve learnt to associate the brand name with the logo, this effect vanishes and shoppers now prefer image-based logos, probably because they are easier to process. This implications of this are two-fold. Firstly, when we’re talking about brands most people think about the Google and Apple’s of this world. But the vast majority of businesses are small, with limited marketing budget and they are going to struggle to build brand awareness. Consequently, for these brands a distinctive based wordmarks may be more effective.
But the second implication does not only apply to wordmarks, but visual logos. Wordmarks outperformed picture-based logos is because shoppers found them more descriptive. And we can use this when it comes to designing picture-based logos as well. Take the Costa Coffee logo.
Although it includes the word ‘coffee’ which certainly helps make the link to the product more salient, it also includes a picture of coffee bean to make this link obvious. This is important because the clearer the logo links to the product, the more positively shoppers perceive the logo to be. Which results in higher salesviii. Businesses can choose how they make this link, either with a descriptive brand name, or visually.
However, there are a couple of caveats to this finding. Clearly if you are selling a product which most people have a negative attitude towards, for example, sanitary towels, palm oil, or a cesspit pit emptying company, it’s best not to make this link more salient. If you do, rather than benefiting from a boost in sales, it results in sales declining. In this situation, the stronger the visual link to the product category, the worse the sales are. The second caveat is that once a logo becomes well known, we recognise it almost instantly. As soon as we see that logo, we associate with the appropriate category, so there is no need for the logo to be as descriptive. Hence this is why there are lots of well-established brands like Ikea, Nivea, or Pepsi who don’t follow this rule and it doesn’t seem to hurt them.
What makes a good brand name?
But it is not just the image that is key to a successful logo; the brand name is also vital. Take a look in both the professional or academic marketing literature and you’ll find a pleather of guidelines suggesting how to come up with the perfect name. While I’ll steer clear of precise recommendations, the psychological literature makes several recommendations that all link back to how easy we find the brand name to process.
When a brand name relates to something tangible in the real world, it makes it far easier for us to process. For example, it is very easy to image a concept like an Apple, Shell, or Red Bull, but names such as IBM or KFC which have no stand-alone meaning are far harder to visualise. The easier it is for shoppers to process the image, the better their recall and recognition of the logo isix.
But the researchers extended the finding and did something a little different. They considered what stimuli humans have evolved to process more easily from an evolutionary perspective. They suspected that humans are more likely to be able to process organic stimuli quicker. This could be anything from flowers, animals or even people. In contrast, they thought humans are slower to process ‘cultural signs’. This would include anything that humans have created and assigned meaning, such as cars, furniture, or cultural symbols such as religious or linguistic symbols. The researchers were right, when it comes to brand names, shoppers process organic names faster than cultural ones. Evolution has meant that we’ve developed a tendency to pay more attention to natural stimuli and this appears to carry over to brand names.
So, what does all this mean for marketers?
If you’re reading this and thinking that your current brand logo doesn’t follow these rule, don’t panic. We’re not saying that if you don’t follow these rules, you can’t be successful. A number of the examples we’ve cited break the rules and are very successful: IBM, FedEx, or AT&T to name a few. But if you are developing a brand from start it’s always best to stack the odds in your favour where possible. And this is even more important for small businesses and new brands. These businesses often have smaller marketing teams and budgets and will appreciate any help they can get to compete against more established brands. But if you’ve already got a successful brand, and it breaks the rule. There is no point changing. You’ve spent a lot of time and money developing a brand. And who needs the stress of a brand redesign….
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References
i Ghosh, T., Sreejesh, S., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2022). Brand logos versus brand names: A comparison of the memory effects of textual and pictorial brand elements placed in computer games. Journal of Business Research, 147, 222-235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.04.017
ii Standing, L., Conezio, J., & Haber, R. N. (1970). Perception and memory for pictures: Single-trial learning of 2500 visual stimuli. Psychonomic science, 19(2), 73-74. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337426
iii Shepard, R. N. (1967). Recognition memory for words, sentences, and pictures. Journal of verbal Learning and verbal Behavior, 6(1), 156-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(67)80067-7
iv Grady, C. L., McIntosh, A. R., Rajah, M. N., & Craik, F. I. (1998). Neural correlates of the episodic encoding of pictures and words. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95(5), 2703-2708. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.95.5.2703
v Hockley, W.E.; Bancroft, T. (2011). "Extensions of the picture superiority effect in associative recognition". Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65 (4): 236–244. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023796.
vi Pieters, R., & M, W. (2004). Attention capture and transfer in advertising: Brand, pictorial, and text-size effects. Journal of Marketing, 68(2), 36–50. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.68.2.36.27794
vii Morgan, C., Fajardo, T.M. & Townsend, C. (2021). Show it or say it: how brand familiarity influences the effectiveness of image-based versus text-based logos. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49, 566–583. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-020-00760-0
viii Luffarelli, J., Mukesh, M., & Mahmood, A. (2019). Let the Logo Do the Talking: The Influence of Logo Descriptiveness on Brand Equity. Journal of Marketing Research, 56(5), 862–878. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243719845000
ix de Lencastre, P., Machado, J. C., & Costa, P. (2023). The effect of brand names and logos’ figurativeness on memory: An experimental approach. Journal of Business Research, 164, 113944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113944