Wells Fargo Missed It: Your Logo Is Not Your Brand

By Mark Arnold, Feb. 11, 2019
​As seen on: On the Mark Strategies

​Wells Fargo has announced another image repair ad campaign, now featuring an updated logo. This is the third campaign the tainted brand has attempted since its scandalous fallout in 2016.

The problem? Your logo is not your brand.

As we teach credit unions and banks across the country, your brand is who you are. Your logo is simply a visual representation of that brand

Changing your logo and calling it image repair is like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound and calling it healed. It simply doesn’t work.

To be fair, Wells Fargo’s new campaign does rightly focus on customer experience. Ads highlight Wells Fargo programs designed to make banking simple, and even feature real employees serving the bank’s customers.

But are Wells Fargo customers really experiencing what the bank promises in the campaign?

Are executives taking strategic measures to reform culture for the ultimate success of their customers, or are they preoccupied with their external reputation?

Should your credit union or bank find itself in a position of needing to rebrand—whether for unfortunate circumstances like Wells Fargo or simply a merger with another institution—you cannot start with the visual elements. And you certainly can’t throw a new logo into a mixed bag of failed image repair attempts.

You must start with strategy.

The most successful websites and logos our team designs come from leadership teams who have strategically decided to invest in their brand.

Strategy drives creative, every time.

Of course, as my friend Casey Boggs teaches, with the right strategic initiative and solution-oriented response, you can always come back from a brand crisis.

But, and this bears repeating, your brand is not your logo.

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