Company Logos what do they tell us…

Have a close look at this logo for instance. Do you see the customer’s smiling face? No? The smile even has a grin of pride in the company. Do you also notice that the logo is trying to convey a very strong message here? The message in my words would be “Amazon.com an online store that have everything from A to Z” Thats what the arrow is pointing to A to Z and It also becomes a customer’s smile 🙂

Here is another classic example of IBM logo (Eye-Bee-M). Since I am working at IBM for the past 6+years I can say this logo is THE BEST logo to convey IBM’s culture for innovation and its mission to work for a better future. The eye signifies a lot of things, observing, future oriented, careful, keen, committed, targeted, etc etc. The Bee conveys a strong message too about IBM’s employees who work relentlessly for a better future for innovation and research works. The M in the logo ties the Eye and the Bee to the original IBM logo showing that IBM never forgets its past and respects and is proud of its legacy. BTW for your information IBM was founded in 1920 and is still standing strong in today’s business arena.

Now, have a look at Enron logo. Enron was once the 7th largest corporation in the US Fortune magazine named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. It achieved infamy at the end of 2001, when it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained mostly by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud. Enron has since become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption. At the core of Enron story was fraudulent data which showed that Enron was making high profits even though in reality it was incurring heavy losses. In other words the company was going down but the stock price was going up due to artificially blown up numbers on its financial statements. Now with that knowledge in mind look at the Enron logo once again. The company name ENRON is pointing downwards, whereas the letter E seems to be signifying the stock prices going UP. The whole story of Enron is somehow conveyed very strongly in its logo.

There are many such examples available which can be discussed under this subject. But this brings me to conclude that symbols, emblems and logos can tell us a LOT if we use the power of intuition and observation that we all possess in varying degrees.

Let me know your observations when you look at company logos.. what do they tell you… I’ll be curious to know… – G