Putting politics aside and focusing on the analysis of Walmart’s new logo, wordmark, and tagline, I noticed that the latter echoed some other tagline, one that consists of two short sentences with a parallel structure, each starting with a verb and featuring one of the 25 reasons why people buy (save money).

Save money. Live better. (Walmart)
Expect more. Pay less. (Target)

It isn’t just the language that’s being copycatted. Walmart’s new starburst echoes competitor Target’s bull’s-eye, with its clean, bright look. Attempting to update its image beyond the logo arena, Walmart has also copycatted Target by changing its corporate uniform for store workers, dispensing with the blue vests and replacing them with khakis and polo shirts similar to Target’s and other retail chains’ uniforms. It is curious to me that as powerful as Walmart is (Even BP asks “How high?” when Walmart tells ‘em to jump—BP offers Walmart’s reps a specially designed meeting room that is “Walmart-friendly.”), they are not only keeping pace with their competitors, but choosing to play monkey-see/monkey-do.

The change to title case/lower case instead of all caps indicates a move toward a more friendly type solution. Using caps can mean strong, bold, and serious, but lowercase means friendly, down-to-earth, and inviting. As far as the symbol goes, Walmart commissioned a design (orange starburst) for a more environmental, warm, friendly, organic element found in nature. The lighter blue of the wordmark indicates a less “heavy” corporate, “lighter” feel, while still being in the cool, professional realm.

BP made the same change when they went from cap BP and the shield toward lowercase bp and the helios, a green symbol to represent nature all the way–although it may appear to be a flower (which is likely a fine interpretation according to their strategy), the bp corporation means for you to understand that it is the circle of the sun, emanating (through the many circles) energy, warmth, friendliness and happiness–and with the circles, even meaning unending love. They used an ad campaign: “Feel the Love.”

And, like the SAT, they wanted to make you understand that the acronym stands for something else–not British Petroleum, but Beyond Petroleum.

Some are befuddled by the hyphen elimination thing. They say that this is “corporate America’s bias against the hyphen” and that companies prefer “smooshing” their names together, like PricewaterhouseCoopers. That’s not a fair comparison, because this is not the result of two names being “smooshed” together. And sorry, but it isn’t just corporate America that eliminates the hyphens. Language research in American English proves that many terms start out with hyphens and after long usage, the hyphens go away. “New York” used to have a hyphen, and so did the word “today.” Walmart once did not have a  hyphen  anyway.

I’m just glad the smiley face went away.

Christine Babick is a marketing strategist and linguist specializing in marketing language, website text, “emo copy,” and cause and relationship marketing. More…

Article Tags: brand | Design | logo | tagline | Visual Identity
Filed under: Branding, Design, Taglines, Visual Identity