Xerox, which five years ago was close to the brink, has made an amazing recovery, thanks to an impressive stream of fine new products and a streamlined business model. But Xerox’s logo and branding have remained essentially unchanged for decades.
Now Xerox announced a new logo and with it a new brand strategy. As Richard Wergan, director of worldwide brand at Xerox, has said: "The new logo is meant to disrupt the mental model of Xerox as just a copier company."
The new logo has a more rounded, softer font, along with a graphic icon that, it appears, signifies Xerox’s global reach. Brand is an important part of the mix, and Xerox’s had stagnated, in spite of its record of innovation. As a BusinessWeek article (“Xerox Gets a Brand Makeover”, 1/7/08) notes:
Xerox, despite the ubiquity of its brand, operates at a brand-building disadvantage to rivals like Canon, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Toshiba in that those brands have strong consumer franchises to buttress their business-to-business images. "The research shows that this gives our competitors an advantage in communicating innovation and modernity," says Wergan.
