For established brands, the familiarity of their names and logos is among their most valuable assets. It takes years of marketing to arrive at nearly universal recognition, so changing the name or logo is a significant move..
Sometimes there is a particular impetus that prompts a brand to take on a new name or a new look. Or maybe the company is looking for a fresh start after acquiring some negative associations . Either way, from time to time, we witness a metamorphosis that shakes up our cultural landscape.
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Read on to learn about the top brand transformations of 2021
1. Facebook Rebranded as Meta
Possibly the biggest rebrand of 2021 was Facebook’s adoption as Meta. The company’s stock ticker symbol is still FB, reflecting the origins of the social media giant that also owns Instagram, Whatsapp, and several other companies.
But perhaps Zuckerberg believed shedding the Facebook brand identity would free his company of the negative stories surrounding the social media platform for the past few years, while signaling a new, forward-thinking direction. The rebrand as Meta plays up the role the company intends to play in the highly-hyped Metaverse and its promise of immersiveness, as we saw here.
2. Square Gained Dimensions as Block
In December 2021, Square announced that it is henceforth to be known as Block. It also introduced an animated 3D logo to fit the new name to take the place of the simple square image.
As with “Meta,” the idea here is to shift the identity into something much more all-encompassing than the original company name. As the press release put it, “The name has many associated meanings for the company — building blocks, neighborhood blocks and their local businesses, communities coming together at block parties full of music, a blockchain, a section of code, and obstacles to overcome.”
3. Nielsen Added Colors for a New Logo
As streaming became the norm, Nielsen struggled to keep up with the trend. . As a potential attempt to prove that it is keeping up with the times, Nielsen changed their logo in 2021
Nielsen touted its new logo as “playful, optimistic and smart.” The triangles are meant to reference the sign for “the universal play button as well as ratings, the forms come together subtly to create an ‘N’ letterform in the negative space, signifying insights revealed by Nielsen’s data and the constant momentum in media.”
It does get a bit carried away in the symbolism here, believing that audiences would intuit that the the upward and downward directions refer to ratings and that the absences also symbolize “the content not seen or heard.”
4. Pearl Milling Company Replaced Aunt Jemima
For 131 years, Quaker marketed pancake-centered products under the name and rendered face of Aunt Jemima. But in 2021, it finally removed that familiar brand in favor of the more generic-sounding Pearl Milling Company to disassociate its products from a symbol often viewed as racist and out of touch.
5. Pfizer Breaks Out of the Oval
Since 1940, Pfizer’s logo has been the name of the company rendered as white letters in a blue oval.
But in 2021, Pfizer went for a completely different look, one that broke free of the oval boundaries. Instead of inscribing the oval, they introduced a new shape, one that’s vaguely suggestive of the DNA structure. It still relies on blue, but now the letters are in royal, a color repeated along with a lighter shade in the symbol.
As Pfizer came to dominate the COVID-19 vaccine market with exclusive rights in some countries and a huge market share in others, perhaps it felt that the more modern look reflects new formulations and approaches in healthcare.
6. A Step Back and Forward for Burger King
In 2021 Burger King decided to take inspiration from the logo it had used at the end of the last century to retain the link with the tradition, an suggest that less is more in food quality.
The most obvious difference now is the removal of the blue curve and the shininess of the bun. Their new logo is meant to reflect the fast food chain’s commitment to more natural foods and its promise to get rid of 120 artificial ingredients.
The interesting thing about the Burger King move is that it highlights one truth about logo design. What is regarded as progressive in one generation can be seen as dated in the next, and what’s “new and improved” becomes the “old and irrelevant.”
2021 was a year of transformation—at least in the marketing world as we attempted to keep up with hyperspeed changing trends and an audience growing more and more fatigued of the outdated. While these six companies shifted their branding, we have a feeling there’s a lot more to come. For more marketing news, head on over to our recaps to hear our take on the latest.