Comments on Baskin Robbins and Best Buy rebrandings
Putting the B in Rebranding, both Best Buy and Baskin Robbins are starting to roll out their respective rebrandings. I am generally critical of rebrandings especially of large and well liked brands. But both of these rebrandings are fantastically executed. They are both evolutionary not revolutionary, are for good positioning reasons, and are well designed.
When I think of getting ice cream at Baskin Robbins I think of letting the kid out in me. It seems as if Baskin Robbins has let the kid out of their logo. The previous logos conservative, linear, serif type face never embodied the brand values or customer experience, and the 31 flavours isn’t as effective a differeniator as it was before. The blue and pink was it’s saving grace in making it more child (or inner child) friendly and distinctive. That was a good thing to maintain along with the basic composition of the logo because the new logo builds the brand without sacrificing too much brand equity. The fun dancing typeface gives the logo a much needed youthful, playful energy. Are you taking notes, Chapman’s?
The only thing I would have done differently is move the BR/31 symbol up over the name, and have the name read without interuption. It could be confusing to read for the few people unfamiliar with the brand.
The big yellow tag with block letters always said discount retailer and not electronics store. When Best Buy was coming to Canada, I assumed they were at competitor of Wal Mart and Cost Co; in fact they carried the same block letters as Cost Co’s logo and Wal Mart’s previous logo. The new logo’s typeface references the type found on alot of their products: LG, Apple, HP, just to name a few. This positions them better by associating themselves implicitly with the electronics industry. While the blue is new to the logo, it isn’t to the brand. The maintaining of colour in both of these examples has served the companies well by maintaining associations built in their patron’s minds.
It seem’s as if Best Buy is testing this logo thoroughly and it may or may not run with it. I hope they do, some great strides are made with it.
Question of the Post: How would you rate these rebrandings on a scale from 1 to 10?
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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large multinational brands everyday designing retail displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.
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