Ford`s Blue Oval, other corporate symbols ad value

Ford's Blue Oval, other corporate symbols ad value, experts say ...
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Ford's Blue Oval, other corporate symbols ad value, experts say
6:33 PM, May 23, 2012 |
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By Zlati Meyer
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The smiley faces at Ford are oval-shaped.
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Now that its credit rating has been raised, the car company has its
iconic Blue Oval back – and with it the symbol of its rich automotive
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heritage and quality product.
Michigan Business
Lincoln
Dearborn
That could be – in the parlance of another quintessential American
brand, MasterCard – priceless.
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“It would not be the same company without that logo. Anytime you
see that logo, it cues up everything you think about Ford. When you
see an advertisement, it makes it that much more valuable,” said
Mike Levens, an assistant professor of marketing at Walsh College,
who called it one of the automakers “intangible assets.”
But that mental association is key.
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“The value of the total brand is determined
Ford credit rating boost: 'The Blue Oval is back'
by comparing how a product or service
would sell without the brand,” explained
branding expert Alvin Schechter, chairman of
the 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 the
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striped globe (AT&T) to the quintet of circles (Olympics), the bitten
apple (Apple) and the four-colored waving flag (Microsoft).
“In our minds, the entire concept of the name and the logo is the
corporation. It’s the brand of the corporation,” said James Gregory,
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Trademark and licensing was a $25.18 billion industry in 2011,
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CEO of CoreBrand, a New York-based brand-strategy firm. “We
value those things all the time. It can be worth 100s of millions of
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Ford's Blue Oval, other corporate symbols ad value, experts say ...
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according to the trade publication The Licensing Letter.
Schechter called the possibility of Ford losing its brand identity
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“disastrous” and “incomprehensible.” But if it had happened, the
carmaker would’ve come up with another logo (“The color blue is
everyone’s property.”) and another name, like taking on Lincoln.
In 2006, seeing the trouble in the industry coming down the pike,
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Ford used assets, such as auto plants and trademarks (including its
famous name), as collateral for $23.4 billion in loans.
That the Dearborn carmaker even mortgaged the Blue Oval was
amazing to Gregory.
“The logo itself is a representation of the corporate brand. In the
case of Ford, you have one that has tremendous value. People get
very emotional and have a real love for the history and heritage of
Ford. When they put that as collateral, I thought it was a very
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interesting statement they were making -- that we’re all in on this,
that we’re going to absolutely have to make this work,” he said. “It
was a statement of how serious the commitment was for the
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company to survive.
Ford is 50th on Interbrand’s 2011 Best Global Brands list, the same
rank as last year; it’s valued at more than $7.4 billion, up 4% over
2010. Of the 12 automotive companies included on the global
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branding and brand-management firm’s annual roster (determined
by financial performance, the role of the brand in the decision to
purchase the product and brand strength), Ford ranked sixth.
Interbrand pointed out that Ford is “rekindling its swagger in the
home market, calling out competitors in current advertising.”
“By seeing a brand logo, it brings the essence of the brand to the
forefront of your mind,” Levens explained. “Anytime you look at
advertising, it’s all the historic stuff that’s been out there before -logo, messages and all the current stuff -- and those blend together
to create a purchase opportunity for Ford. The fact that they have
that logo, if they couldn’t use it, they’d have to get somewhere
some other way without that visual cue. If you didn’t have that, what
would it be? The color blue? The shape of the car?”
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The actual design is itself clever, according to Schechter. The Blue
Oval is technically a wordmark, which includes both the name of the
company and the design; think of the encircled cursive font of GE
versus Gucci’s double-Gs.
“A company that has a wordmark is generally better off than one
that has a separate symbol,” he said. “It combines both the appeal
of the visual device and the recognizably of the name. You don’t
have to advertise for years that the swoosh is part of Nike. You see
it immediately, the brand name in all its glory.”
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