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6:33 PM, May 23, 2012 |
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The smiley faces at Ford are oval-shaped.
Now that its credit rating has been raised, the car company has itsiconic Blue Oval back – and with it the symbol of its rich automotiveheritage and quality product.
That could be – in the parlance of another quintessential Americanbrand, MasterCard – priceless.
“It would not be the same company without that logo. Anytime yousee that logo, it cues up everything you think about Ford. When yousee an advertisement, it makes it that much more valuable,” saidMike Levens, an assistant professor of marketing at Walsh College,who called it one of the automakers “intangible assets.”
But that mental association is key.
“The value of the total brand is determinedby comparing how a product or servicewould sell without the brand,” explainedbranding expert Alvin Schechter, chairman ofthe New York branding firm Janine Gordon
Associates. “A bottle of brown soda versus Coca Cola.”
Think of the logos in your own life – from the Golden Arches(McDonald’s), the cornucopia of fruit (Fruit of the Loom) and thestriped globe (AT&T) to the quintet of circles (Olympics), the bittenapple (Apple) and the four-colored waving flag (Microsoft).
“In our minds, the entire concept of the name and the logo is thecorporation. It’s the brand of the corporation,” said James Gregory,CEO of CoreBrand, a New York-based brand-strategy firm. “Wevalue those things all the time. It can be worth 100s of millions ofdollars.
Trademark and licensing was a $25.18 billion industry in 2011,
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By Zlati Meyer
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according to the trade publication The Licensing Letter.
Schechter called the possibility of Ford losing its brand identity“disastrous” and “incomprehensible.” But if it had happened, thecarmaker would’ve come up with another logo (“The color blue iseveryone’s property.”) and another name, like taking on Lincoln.
In 2006, seeing the trouble in the industry coming down the pike,Ford used assets, such as auto plants and trademarks (including itsfamous name), as collateral for $23.4 billion in loans.
That the Dearborn carmaker even mortgaged the Blue Oval wasamazing to Gregory.
“The logo itself is a representation of the corporate brand. In thecase of Ford, you have one that has tremendous value. People getvery emotional and have a real love for the history and heritage ofFord. When they put that as collateral, I thought it was a veryinteresting statement they were making -- that we’re all in on this,that we’re going to absolutely have to make this work,” he said. “Itwas a statement of how serious the commitment was for thecompany to survive.
Ford is 50th on Interbrand’s 2011 Best Global Brands list, the samerank as last year; it’s valued at more than $7.4 billion, up 4% over2010. Of the 12 automotive companies included on the globalbranding and brand-management firm’s annual roster (determinedby financial performance, the role of the brand in the decision topurchase the product and brand strength), Ford ranked sixth.Interbrand pointed out that Ford is “rekindling its swagger in thehome market, calling out competitors in current advertising.”
“By seeing a brand logo, it brings the essence of the brand to theforefront of your mind,” Levens explained. “Anytime you look atadvertising, it’s all the historic stuff that’s been out there before --logo, messages and all the current stuff -- and those blend togetherto create a purchase opportunity for Ford. The fact that they havethat logo, if they couldn’t use it, they’d have to get somewheresome other way without that visual cue. If you didn’t have that, whatwould it be? The color blue? The shape of the car?”
The actual design is itself clever, according to Schechter. The BlueOval is technically a wordmark, which includes both the name of thecompany and the design; think of the encircled cursive font of GEversus Gucci’s double-Gs.
“A company that has a wordmark is generally better off than onethat has a separate symbol,” he said. “It combines both the appealof the visual device and the recognizably of the name. You don’thave to advertise for years that the swoosh is part of Nike. You seeit immediately, the brand name in all its glory.”
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