Your Logo Is Just the Clothes Your Brand Wears

September 6, 2013 By Digital Operative,

Some people are really good at expressing themselves through what they wear. Just by the way they dress, you can guess what music they might listen to, what type of job they might have, what their income level might be, etc. Even still, you can’t know for sure who the person is simply based on the clothes themselves, since the clothes are only surface-level representations of what the person may like or believe. The clothes are not the person. Think about this the next time someone equates their logo with their brand. There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about the difference between logo and brand, but maybe my analogy will help:

Brand = Personality
Logo = Clothes

A company’s brand goes far beyond its logo, or even its overall visual identity. The brand is the culmination of everything the company does, makes, stands for, and believes. The brand differentiates a company in the market and can be used to shape everything from product development, to corporate structure, to deciding where a product is sold, and yes—to visual identity and logo. When a company makes any decision, they should be asking, “is this on brand?” The logo is simply the symbol that is used to convey, in the simplest of formats, what the brand is. You may be able to make certain assumptions about a brand by the logo, but the logo itself is little more than the clothes the brand wears. Eric Hanser is DOs Senior Strategist