Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

  • Home
  • Travel
  • Yoga
You are here: Home / Archives for brand consistency

The Cost of Individual Expression

October 22, 2007 •

There’s a real ten­sion in Cor­po­rate Amer­ica between the indi­vid­u­al’s desire for cre­ative expres­sion — to make a mark — and the cor­po­ra­tion’s desire to cut costs.

When that indi­vid­ual hap­pens to be a prod­uct man­ager, a mar­ket­ing or brand man­ager, or a “cre­ative,” it’s not uncom­mon for them to drive new vari­a­tions in how the brand is expressed. These vari­a­tions tend to crop up in con­junc­tion with new prod­uct launches or line exten­sions. As a result logo treat­ments and other aspects of visual iden­tity can vary all over the place.

The Octo­ber 2007 issue of Fast Com­pany makes this point all too clearly. The story opens with HP’s new CEO, Mark Hurd, ask­ing his senior design team why they were both­er­ing to meet with him (so early in his reign…) The arti­cle goes on to say:

The pony­tailed Sam Lucente, who’d become HP’s first-ever vice pres­i­dent of design two years ear­lier, was in the hot seat. He flashed a slide that showed dozens of HP logos, each cre­ated by a dif­fer­ent team within the com­pany. The next slide was of a sin­gle logo, crafted by his cor­po­rate design crew, that could be used every­where. Lucente pre­dicted that when 500 mil­lion of the new “jewel” logos were shipped, the com­pany would have saved roughly $50 mil­lion in devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing costs.

As the Fast Com­pany arti­cle goes on to say, orga­ni­za­tional dynam­ics and cul­ture can make it dif­fi­cult to achieve brand con­sis­tency, even when vari­a­tions are costly:

But it’s one thing to win back­ing for a big design ini­tia­tive from the CEO, who is think­ing about the entire com­pany. It’s some­thing else to get exec­u­tives and man­agers who run spe­cific busi­ness units to embrace cor­po­rate design edicts. HP has scores of busi­ness units orga­nized into three main divi­sions — per­sonal sys­tems such as desk­top and note­book PCs; imag­ing and print­ing; and soft­ware and servers — each with its own P&L. The com­pa­ny’s 250 design­ers report to the heads of their par­tic­u­lar busi­ness units, who are used to oper­at­ing inde­pen­dently. Lucente may want to cre­ate com­pa­ny­wide stan­dards, but he can’t nec­es­sar­ily enforce them.

Stay tuned. It will be inter­est­ing to see how effec­tive Lucente can be at rein­ing in HP’s inde­pen­dent thinkers and prod­uct man­agers.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

Recent Posts

  • Wet Sand, Wet Boots, Birds
  • Living with Vintage Items
  • Slowing Down
  • Reflections on My Camino
  • Going Off the Beaten Track in France

© 2020 by Christine Thompson. All rights reserved. • Log in