Skip Lindberg, resident genius at Maple Creative and author of the Marketing Genius blog gives us a good rant about what’s not quite right with Walmart’s identity makeover.
Skip brings up a problem faced by dozens of brands going through an identity re-boot: a mark that looks too much like another brand that may – or may not – be complimentary. In this case, Skip says (and I agree) that Walmart’s new mark looks too much like the Holiday Inn mark located on hundreds of marquis signs throughout America.
Yikes.
I have another problem with the new Walmart mark and that goes directly to the discount chain’s “every day low pricing” positioning. The retailer offers that positioning as some kind of guarantee. But the new mark looks too much like an asterisk for me to take any kind of guarantee seriously.
Am I reading too much into this or is it a real problem? Let me know what you think.
