The world of branding and marketing is where weird things happen. It’s strange how some businesses keep playing with their brands while coming out with campaigns that prove to be successful.
Rebranding amongst this remains an activity that almost each brand takes up for the sake of meeting the changing requirements of the market. The graphic design world is fast paced and hence, trends and styles keep changing every now and then. Three dimensional graphics change to flat ones while shadows are cleaned to form a minimal design. With such furious changes coming into action, rebranding the structure of a brand becomes a vital activity to conduct.
Though essential, rebranding comes at a cost. This cost could be anything from very low to extremely high, depending upon the nature of the work.
SEE ALSO: How to Select the Right Logo for Your Business
There are several brands that have gone about the process of rebranding, however; history remembers a few. Today, in this article, we’ll be discussing the businesses that have paid a fortune to get their branding done right.
Symantec
The technology business Symantec is in the habit of changing its logo every decade. It has been doing so since its inception in 1982. The company since then has changed its logo periodically in 1990, 2000, and 2010.
The most recent of its rebranding was claimed to be done for $1.28 billion at the time when Symantec purchased VeriSign. The idea was to incorporate the VeriSign’s iconic check into the new Symantec logo for the sake of transferring the sense of reliability of VeriSign to the new merged business.
This has been the most expensive logo in history, however; some sources claim that the cost, as stated, is actually the cost of acquisition and rebranding combined.
BP
Next in line is British Petroleum, the previous logo of which was a green shield with the letters BP written in yellow. In 2008, the company decided to rebrand its logo for which it hired Landor Associates.
The new logo, as a result of the rebrand, was a Helios which made up a sunflower. The logo was made up of bright yellow and green colors each reflecting a major aspect of the business. The bold yellow color denoted the sun’s energy whereas; the green color was meant to strengthen BP’s position as an environment friendly company. The rebrand cost the business $211 million.
The new logo was giving the company great business until the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This one disaster resulted in ruining the environment friendly image of BP while causing it a major loss.
Accenture
It was the time when Andersen Consulting and Andersen Accounting parted ways, that Andersen Consulting felt it needed a new logo. The business also changed its name to Accenture which meant “accent of the future”. The campaign ran, for the sake of rebranding, was priced at a whooping $100 million.
The logo that was launched, as a result of the rebrand, was a simple one with Accenture written in lower case letters. There was a forward mark on top of the word while the overall look of the logo was kept simple and minimal.
The logo was highly criticized for being simple and vague, however; the company was successful in making profits after the rebrand.
Posten Norge
Posten Norge, a postal service provider in Norway, used to have a logo consisting of a crown and horn in its design. It was in 2008 that the company decided to go for a rebrand while changing its logo to something more modern. As a result, a new logo was brought into being for the cost of $55 million.
The campaign, though expensive, helped create a positive image of the brand while generating its awareness amongst the customers and clients.
Anz
Anz, an Australian and New Zealand Banking Group, took two whole years in rebranding their service. The process cost them a big fat $15 million in which the business was bestowed with a new logo as well. The new logo had the business’s name written down accompanied with an icon at its right end.
The rebranding came with several people criticizing the new logo. Many claimed that the design of the logo did not justify its cost.
Conclusion
There are many other brands in the world that have paid a fortune to get their logos done right, however; squeezing them into one small article is an impossible task to perform. Hence, the brands, as mentioned above, are the ones that top the list of the brands with the most expensive logos in history.
It is to be noted that the cost, as mentioned in the article, is not only of the logo redesign but of the complete rebranding package that the businesses purchased for the sake of updating themselves while upgrading their image in the market.
This list by no means ends here. The future is likely to observe more such rebrands at a much higher cost than the ones mentioned here as it is the best that all the businesses in the world strive for.