What does our logo look like? This is often how the customer briefing for a new order begins. Who hasn't at one time or another told a customer internally that the current logo may no longer be up to date or no longer fits the current positioning, without realising the associated costs? For a medium-sized retail or production company, a logo change often means an investment of more than one million euros and a time horizon of two to three years for the changeover. Anyone who has ever drawn up an application list knows how many contact points logos are used at. A logo change is therefore rather rare. For companies, it is usually every 20-30 years, depending on the company's development. But there are also reasons to change the logo earlier. More on this later.

The situation is not quite as dramatic in the area of pure product and service brands. But here, too, the effort and costs are quickly underestimated. Bear in mind that a better bath additive consists of primary packaging (label), secondary packaging (folding box) and transport packaging (tray), plus often a product folder and merchandising articles, and possibly event and partner activities. Although a logo can be replaced quickly in the online sector, the question of meaning and purpose remains. If an old logo appears somewhere years later, the expiry date is automatically transferred to everything else. And so a logo for large product ranges can last between 8 (Nivea) and 12 (KNORR) years. It should also not be forgotten that the new logo in itself does not bring any more euros into the till.

It is therefore not the initial costs but the implementation costs that many companies rightly shy away from and discourage. But the creation costs should not be underestimated either. It is true that fiverr offers a minimum data set for as little as 5 euros and namelix provides a handsome logo, supposedly created by an artificial intelligence, with the name creation. However, a closer look reveals that nothing other than prefabricated data sets are used here. What makes logos really expensive is not the research, the visual creation and the personnel costs (often with several local teams for logos to be used globally). The number of data sets to be realised, often 50 to 200 for online and offline applications, is also manageable. If a company decides to rebrand, whether for the company itself or for a leading brand in the portfolio, this is done for strategic reasons. In this case, it is necessary to involve everyone in numerous meetings and plan the consequences. An effort of several months. I like to compare the development of a new logo with pregnancy and birth.

A logo needs mothers and fathers. The decision in favour of a new logo is made at the top of the company, by the highest committee. The decision is rarely accompanied by market research. That would also publicise the internal strategy too early and create uncertainty on the outside. I have also seen cases where the CEO's other spouse had the last word. There is probably a residual sense of taste here. Ultimately, the decision on a new logo is always also a decision on aesthetics. It makes me smile to think of the sometimes homophobic remarks made by the male employees of the federal construction company IMPLENIA. They refused to wear "ds Bliemli" on their helmets.