Xerox Gets a Brand Makeover

Once dominant in the copier market, the tech giant has had to wake up to a new world. Its latest brand identity attempts to reflect its newfound nimbleness

by David Kiley

Artist's representation of how the new Xerox identity might look in a physical environment.

The new identity, created by Interbrand, comprises a wordmark and sphere logo.

The old logo, designed in the 1960s by Chermayeff & Geismar, was deemed inappropriate for the Internet age.

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The venerable Xerox (XRX) brand is far from dead or dying. It is, after all, not just a brand name but also in some countries a verb, like Google (GOOG). That's pretty good company in the world of high tech. But most of Xerox's customers don't put the Stamford (Conn.) copier company in the same class as the Internet search juggernaut. A new brand makeover, Xerox's first in 40 years, kicks off this week in a step toward trying to get customers to think of Xerox in a different light.

A new corporate logo is the most visible change in the makeover that extends to product design, product naming, building signage; everything the Xerox brand touches. "We are a very different company today than we were when our current brand architecture was developed," says Richard Wergan, director of worldwide brand at Xerox. "The new logo is meant to disrupt the mental model of Xerox as just a copier company."

Xerox's familiar logo is called a "wordmark," which means its logo is its name expressed in a consistent font-style. Research conducted by corporate identity and brand consulting firm Interbrand showed that it had become too familiar and dated to the point where the public, across the globe, were more apt to glance over it than give it attention.

Making the Brand More Approachable

Designed in the 1960s by branding firm, Chermayeff & Geismar, the familiar block-capital-letter XEROX wordmark, most often seen around the world in red, did not lend itself to the three-dimensional world of Internet and mobile-phone marketing canvases. The new logo, created in FS Albert font, is accompanied by a symbol—a red sphere that is trying to convey a sense of the globe. The intersecting graphic ribbons encircling the sphere signify the worldwide connections between Xerox's customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The new wordmark, with softened and rounded lower-case letters, is a far cry from the former imposing logo hatched in an era when U.S. Steel and IBM (IBM) were kings of the corporate mountains.

The new graphic identity of the company is meant to make Xerox a more approachable brand without compromising its reputation for engineering. In fact, an internal document circulated between Interbrand and Xerox describes the new graphic font this way: "I am FS Albert. I am a modern and approachable font. My rounded corners make me more human and less technical." The sphere symbol will be especially used on the Internet and will spin in other animated applications, says Maryanne Stump, Interbrand's senior director of brand strategy. "The old Xerox logo and graphics just didn't lend themselves to the new media landscape."

But does it make much difference? Dennis Keene, an independent marketing consultant, says done properly, a new brand architecture can be a great start to galvanizing employees around a new brand idea, and from there it travels to customers. "You have to do all the other things right too, but a brand's graphics are the connective tissue of a brand strategy and reache consumer brains in ways they aren't even aware of…it's the difference between getting the wiring of the brand right or wrong," says Keene.

Dependable and established

That may be true, but Xerox is out to make sure that the changes pay off in dollars, not just impressions. Interbrand's Stump says that tracking the return-on-investment is part of the program. The characteristics of the Xerox brand that Interbrand hopes to communicate through the overhaul include innovation, forward thinking, flexibility, and enterprise. By tracking customer and noncustomer attitudes toward Xerox and its products and communications over the next few years in interviews, surveys, and focus groups, Interbrand will have to prove to Xerox that the program is working.