The value of logos on clothing

Recent case studies have shown what we all suspected – the logo is king. But why?

Partly it’s because a logo, emblem or monogram is not language specific. The ‘golden arches’ appear around the world, and have become so ubiquitous that some people don’t realise they are the capital M in McDonalds! Partly the success of logos is down to human nature – over 74% of people find it easier to process images than sounds or words, and that means an immediately identifiable image that relates to your business creates and confirms brand identity every time it is seen.

Clothing is another corporate identity success story – we can all identify airline staff, chefs, and policemen by their clothing, but did you know that most people can also identify over forty individual corporations from the clothing worn by their staff? Whether it’s the UPS guy or the KwikFit fitter, we have an innate ability to learn corporate clothing details and retain them. Amazingly, people can spot the difference between an RAC and an AA staff member at nearly forty yards, on the motorway, at night. And it’s not the colour of their high visibility clothing that people recognise, because asked to say which company wears orange and which wears yellow, most people have no idea. And that suggests that the emblem of each organisation, even at a distance, is instantly recognisable.

What’s also interesting is that people can identify brands very fast even when they are very small emblems on polo-shirts or even simply monograms on a shirt front. We seem hard-wired for this kind of behaviour and that’s good news for companies hoping to build a brand presence because as well as appearing on clothing, the logo should appear on both internal and outgoing material, intranets, websites and emails.