Firms often spend a huge amount of time and financial resources on getting their branding strategies right, to serve just one purpose and that is to initiate and sustain consumer interest. But the world has been changing drastically for the past couple of years. Smartphones and social media have infiltrated our lives as we look forward towards a future that might feature driverless cars and robots that could learn to think and act on their own. What worked two decades or even five years ago, just doesn’t make the cut now. Old strategies need to be replaced with newer ones that are more in line with the world we inhabit today.

One of the most significant places, where we can see this change in attitudes is the domain of branding. The Millennial Generation doesn’t like conventional forms of branding, as signified by a recent research by Goldman Sachs. In the research it has been found that Millennials would buy clothes without the brand’s logo more easily. And that’s not it, these Millennials would rather spend their money on vacations and food than go to pay an extra premium for a certain brand’s name, according to Morgan Stanley.

For brands, this is a very complex scenario, because they are now in constant danger of suffering a logo burnout, which means that their target markets would stop buying their product if the logo of the brand is aggressively used. Nowadays, brands just cannot put their logos everywhere as Louis Vuitton found out after its trademark handbags, which featured the brand’s logo went unpopular. To avoid facing a similar logo burnout for your brand, make sure you are taking the following steps under consideration:

Logos are now to be restrictively used as branding propositions:

If we say, that the Millennials don’t like their clothes infiltrated with logos and how they won’t pay a premium for a brand’s name, that doesn’t mean that logos are any less important. They still are of high value in establishing your brand’s identity and help your target market understand your vision. But, having said that, logos should now be used restrictively and not everywhere. Your brand is not to be overexposed by placing your logo everywhere like on promo products, your own products etc.

You need to make sure that your logo stays true to the concept of exclusivity and is only used whenever a brand mention is necessary. Even if you are going to file your logo on a product, make sure that it’s not too prominent and the person who is wearing or using it, is looking like a human billboard. Being simple, yet elegant is the name of the game.

Minimalism:

Millennials simply don’t like confusing stuff with too much fluff and details. Keeping things simple and minimal is what attracts the attention of Millennials today. Many brands understood that and they adopted their logos to fit the bill of minimalistic design in their logos. Some famous examples are the new logos of Google and Starbucks.

Google’s Logo

Starbuck’s Logo

Even newer firms like Snapchat and Google’s own self-driving car unit named Waymo, have very simplistic logos that are instantly recognizable. With single color schemes mashed with gradients, these logos have become hugely popular.

(Autonomous Car with Waymo’s Logo)

Designing for the Platform:

In old days, logos were supposed to just pictorial representations of the brand with no practical purpose, other than helping the brand to get its name recognized. Now things have progressed beyond that stage and people are interacting with logos in real time. Apps on Mobiles have an icon, which most of the time is the logo itself and the user has to click on it to go through to the app.

The mobile screen’s real estate is quite restrictive and the icon appears quite small, so brands need to make sure that their logos are easily recognizable and attractive enough to warrant a click by the user. Designing for the platform will allow you to leverage your logo more than you could do otherwise.

As more and more businesses transcend from brick and mortar to the digital space, we will witness a surge in how logos will be used in a more integrated manner and play their part in augmenting the user experience.

Logos have always been at the heart of our initial branding endeavors and they hold a special significance when it comes to providing a certain unique identity to a brand, but as time changes, we need to make sure that even if our love for logos has not changed, the way we use them, matches how consumers perceive them to help in delivering the purpose of generating as much brand engagement as possible with an effective impact.