• A competition is organized by the Ministry of Culture to modify the logo of newsagents.

  • Will this rebranding with great fanfare attract new customers and seduce consumers?

  • If the logo has its certain marketing importance, we should not base excessive hopes on it either.

“Please, draw me a logo”… The Ministry of Culture has launched a competition to redesign the famous pen of the newsagents.

You have until Monday, January 16 to submit your best model, before a jury selects three to four candidates to work on the prototype.

So farewell to the famous yellow and red feather, a new logo will soon adorn the 21,000 newsagents in France.

But what effect will this rebranding have?

Is an effective logo useful or even essential to attract the customer?

“Our brain and our eye analyze an image much faster than a text.

The logo is therefore the first piece of information that we receive and that we will process, as long as it is of high quality”, analyzes Pierre-Louis Desprez, managing director of Kaos, a firm specializing in innovation and brands.

Decisive seconds and square centimeters

The first information, and sometimes even the only one, reminds the graphic designer and videographer Klemo, whose Youtube channel specializing in logo rebranding has 160,000 subscribers: "Today, we are overloaded with heaps of information, the very first seconds are therefore ultra-important and decisive so as not to zap.

What matters in those seconds is the image of the logo, not the quality of the product or its usefulness.

If the logo is not good, the consumer will move on.

We scroll through brands like TikTok videos, so you have to get a visual slap from the first glance.

Another huge advantage of the image compared to the name of the brand: "Not everyone speaks the same language, nor does not read the same alphabet, but everyone understands an image", supports Marcel Botton, CEO of Nomen,



But then, what is a good logo?

The answer is to be found in these first few precious seconds, according to Pierre-Louis Desprez: “It has to tell a story that gives meaning to the brand”.

With a little subtlety all the same, “this story must fit on a square centimetre, you don't have a Picasso painting”.

Klemo adds: “The message must be clear, effective and consistent with the brand and the atmosphere it wants to create.

The logo of a cake brand should tell me what type of cake I'm going to eat: for children, refined pastry, first prize..."

Father logo, tell us a story

Meaning, but also a story, insists Pierre-Louis Deprez: "If you remove the Starbucks siren to put just a cup or grain to grind, then you only sell coffee, and one wonders why choose this mark it”, and why pay your goblet of

Macchiato

six euros fifty.

Also beware of misinterpretation.

Marcel Botton takes the example of the CNRS logo, where arrows point in several directions: "We suspect that they meant that they dealt with lots of different subjects, but above all it gives the impression that it goes in all the senses, which is totally counter-productive with the desired message.

»

The decisive question remains: should you redesign your logo, at the risk of losing your identity


?

Marcel Botton: “A logo ages faster than a brand, so it can be useful to modernize it.

It also reminds us that fashions pass, and that you have to think about a fairly timeless logo rather than surfing on quickly outdated trends.

»

Between modernity and tradition

Pierre-Louis Desprez gives his philosophy: "We modernize when the story is not strong enough", otherwise we are content with minor changes, such as small modifications to the letters of Coca-Cola.

“It takes angel eyes to see the difference,” continues the expert.

Another example given by Klemo: Adidas, which decided to delete its name at the bottom behind the famous three stripes.

A detail that lightens and strengthens the brand, according to him.

There remains the untouchable of the untouchables, Nike, "the perfect logo", in the eyes of the graphic designer.

But the time is also for innovation, especially with the Internet, which allows you to modify your digital logos at little or no cost.

“Google in particular changes and adapts its logo very often over international events or world days.

The logo world has cheered up a bit,” continues Pierre-Louis Desprez.

A good reason to rebrand the pens of newsagents?

There is no study that looks at the correlation between rebranding and attracting new customers, our experts remind us.

"It can be useful to talk about yourself, a little buzz and attract a little attention, but it is ephemeral", supports the general manager of Kaos.

The specialist takes the example of the GAP brand, which tried to change its logo without much success: “They would have done better to try to make more efficient products than to think of a new icon.

The logo, yes it's important, yes a more modern version can bring back a few more customers, but it's still a nice lick of paint.

You don't save a business with a lick of paint, no matter how nice.

»

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