Hyundai Genesis winged badge
Hyundai is putting winged badges in place of the already sparsely used Hyundai H on the Hyundai Genesis coupe and sedan. These badges were originally intended for only the Korean and Chinese markets, but now are on a third of the the North American Genesii I have seen. Hyundai Genesis owners I have talked to are actually running to their dealers to order new badges to replace their Hyundai logos if they were not fortunate enough to have the wings come from the showroom.
We have talked about how the Genesis is low on original features, and two posts back we talked about tagging on to another brands brand associations. Well the Genesis winged emblem took a little too much direct inspiration from the Bentley wing logo (as well as a now upscale brand, Mini.) According to Hyundai, the wings mean “spirit of flight and soaring above it all.” It is a clear attempt to borrow some brand equity from Bentley to give the Genesis some upscale credence. In our example with Tom Tom being inspired by Sim City, they only took inspiration for the music and look and feel of the graphic design. The Genesis badge has exactly the same architecture of the Bentley badge, and is only different in detail and not spirit.
I’ve spent a good amount of time in the Genesis sedan and have been very impressed with it, given the price. If Hyundai is going to “soar above [them] all” and command a premium price for their premium car, than they are going to have to have original features. Right now, they are flying behind the pack just at a lower price.
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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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July 12th, 2010 at 8:38 am
[...] benefiting from the brand associations of another brand. We talked about this in regards to the Hyundai Genesis badge being similar to the Bentley, and Genesis benefiting from all of the luxury associations that come with positioning them selves [...]
August 31st, 2010 at 11:12 am
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