New Year New Logos: AT&T, intel & Kodak Rebrand Jan 07 2006
Out with the old, in with the new. This month has seen new branding for 3 major American corporations, and with the shiny new logos comes the usual corporate babble.
AT&T: “They tell me it’s more trendy and modern."
Good to hear AT&T's CEO Ed Whitacre standing firmly behind the changes to the brand, which was detailed in a Gizmodo article recently:
“We agonized over the letters,” says Ed Whitacre, the chairman and CEO of the combined company, who made the final call on the name and the logo. He says marketing people finally convinced him that the new look was more evocative of the Internet generation: “They tell me it’s more trendy and modern."
Fantastic. Whitacre elaborates at the company's site, explaining "The revitalized mark symbolizes these attributes — innovation, integrity, quality, reliability and unsurpassed customer care." Indeed. And just in case you hadn't heard this nutshell before; "Transparency was added to the globe to represent clarity and vision." right...
Pointless. Punctuation. Period.
AT&T takes this chance to jump on the full stopped out tagline bandwagon too - popularised by Sony's "like.no.other" tagline. AT&T promises "Your world. Delivered.". Intel on the other hand gives us "Intel. Leap ahead.™ An idea, a mantra, a call to action." I feel invigorated already.
Intel Drop An E
Intel's long-running "drop e" logo and "intel inside" swirl get merged, with a new, sharper typeface resulting in a more consistent image across the brand. Someone's also had the sense to drop the painful, web-safey blue for a more stylish shade.
Kodak Think Outside The Box
Finally, Kodak breaks from 70 years of tradition and disposes of it's famous yellow box. As Betty Noonan, director of brand management and marketing services at Kodak says, "We want to break out of the box, in a lot of ways".
Last year the Kodak brand was valued at $5 billion, down from $11.8 billion in 2000 according to the annual Interbrand Co./Businessweek top 100 global brand ranking. No doubt they'll be hoping this facelift will improve matters somewhat.