He says that a logo is more akin to a first name or short identifier. I would add to it and say a logo should be a trigger. It should lead to an association with the relationship you have by delivering your brand to your market.

If Pepsi and Best Buy are worried about market share is their attention on a critical marketing factor that will strengthen their brand? No. It’s not. The critical marketing would be renewing and establishing relationships their brand should embody. If those companies don’t know what their brand means or to whom they are building a relationship with, then no amount of logo revamping will help them connect to the people who make up that market share they are looking to call their own.

The Small Business Branding Reality Check

So here’s my reality check for small business who are drinking that Pepsi for their afternoon pick-me-up or who go to Best Buy to look at new computer gear. A logo had nothing to do with your next interaction with those companies. As small businesses look to grow and serve their market, stay focused on fulfilling the expectations that your business wants to project onto your market.  That’s your brand. Its bigger and more important that what your logo looks like.

Big Businesses Have Money to Spend on Non-Core Branding Activities. You Don’t.

Steven Cardinale put together a concept that I think most small business owners should focus on.

I think Pepsi or Best Buy or any of the large brand corporations out there are having a hard time trying to figure out why people connect with their product and consequently they simply spin their wheels working on the external facing components of their brand.  And since they have these huge budgets they have the resources to expend chasing non-core branding tasks.

What you think a logo says about your business, probably isn’t what your market thinks.

Jay Ehret of the marketing spot laid the cards on the table for small businesses who put too much thought into their logo.

The deal is that no one, outside of your committee or focus group that thought up these explanations, will have a clue to those meanings.

So if you think people will look at your logo and see “fluid connections with upward growth” you are deceiving yourself. If you want these explanations for your own internal use, go right ahead. But I think you are spending way too much time on that. You just need a simple visual that relies mainly on a unique font presentation.

Build your brand, spend the money and the time to grow those relationships with the people in your market, not the symbols behind them.