Is Changing your Logo a Good Idea?

Some businesses change their logo as often as they change their printer ink, while others have maintained the same logo for decades. Branding your company with a good logo can provide your community with familiarity, awareness of your business, and can help to create loyalty. Understanding how your logo impacts your business and why and when to change it can help you to create a lasting brand image.

A simple search on some of your favorite corporate brands will show you the importance of modifying or changing your logo. Companies like Apple, Pepsi, and just about all-major brands have gone through revisions of their company logo over the years. Though there is no standardized rule for how often to change your logo it is definitely a good idea to do this periodically.

Pepsi for instance appears to be on a roughly ten-year cycle for their logo. This has worked pretty well. When you look at the history of the logo image, you can see how it has changed with the times. The logo reflects the period and you can easily see how certain versions now look dated. This is what can happen to your logo as well. Looking at just about any other corporate logo history will have this same outcome of some previous logos looking dated.

A logo and brand refresh can be good for business and can breathe new life and excitement into a business. Though we would caution complete brand makeovers as these can sometimes muddy a brand and confuse customers, and should only be done when it is absolutely necessary. Instead, look at the top corporate companies and take a cue from them. Most of these logos have slight but impactful changes that give the brand a new and fresh approach.

Personally I like the ten year approach to a logo change, though in the IT and MSP world, a five year schedule may be more effective given the amount of change in the products and industry. Changing your logo more often than this may not compliment the goal of brand awareness, and actually can potentially hurt business.