Lego my Logo!
The elusive Marketing Triple Play
I The Marketing Triple Play
Check this amazing product I discovered researching this week’s article for The Wirepine Weekly (new name!)
Gobsmacked I was. I was happy with the title that popped into my noggin as a take on the famous L'eggo My Eggo ®️ marketing campaign that lives on in perpetuity here. I started out writing an article on Business Logos but when I found Kellogg’s Eggo Homestyle Lego Star Wars II Exclusive Waffles I had to stop and play with my food. Toast, Break & Build!
Let’s break down this Marketing Triple Play. Kellogg’s will not be denied the top waffle spot. They claim Eggo is the 'bestselling frozen waffle in North America' and with this kind of creativity I don't doubt it. I had a Eggo phase where they were just an excuse for me to eat copious amounts of maple syrup. They were maple Syrup sponges. Apparently, it's not just me - can you believe the market for Frozen Waffles is at nearly $3B WW and projected to grow to $4B in the next 5 years. Will waffles do more for humanity than AI? Tossup for real.
Add in Lego! Lego has had an outsize influence on my life. Lego was one of my customers at Microsoft and I visited their Headquarters in Denmark which was very cool but even better I met with them later at a conference and they brought me a bunch of Lego Keychains including Star Wars characters and that was probably the best thing I ever got at one of those conferences. Lego also wins for best ever family amusement park visit down in Carlsbad. Super chill place. Lego makes 20 billion Lego bricks a year to satiate the builders and over 400 billion bricks have been produced since they started. Since they’re indestructible there are probably at least 399,999,999,999 lego bricks out in the wild today. Once in a while you gotta see all the digits to get an inkling how big a Billion is. Crazy big is what it is and it gets throw it around a lot in this article.
The final out in the Marketing Triple Play - Star Wars. Sheesh. I was in 6th grade when the original Star Wars came out and I saw it at least 6 times that year including once when I took my parents and my dad fell asleep and I still can't believe that happened. I took a chemistry class that summer at Hollywood High and of course when it came time to be creative with the acid etch glass experiment, I made the Star Wars logo and yeah it was the envy of everyone in class. $10Billion dollars is what the internet’s says the Star Wars franchise has made in movie revenue alone.
Let’s use the best business chart, the Venn Diagram to visualize the impact of what Kellogg accomplished in this rare Marketing Triple Play. I give you the Waffle Venn Diagram with Waffle Venn Diagram music so you can see just how effective this one simple marketing trick is:
Expect even more amazing things to happen in this space as Kellog just split into two companies so as the CEO said, 'Frosted Flakes does not have to compete with Pringles.' Also, don't bother looking up Marketing Triple Play because it didn't exist until Wirepine uncovered it and I will copyright it soon.
II One more rabbit hole before we get serious
If it weren't for Cheerios, Kellogg’s would own the top cereal spot with Frosted Flakes. Man I used to love frosted flakes. My sister and I would fight over who would got that one mini-box in the variety pack on family vacations (the only time we were allowed to eat such yumminess). How can you compete with like 20 flavors of Cheerios? General Mills keeps cranking out flavors for Cheerio aficionados. Like limited edition Pumpkin Spice Cheerios -yuck. Of course, someone wrote an article on this but trust me on this one - don’t click unless you really care deeply because your eyeballs will hate you after the onslaught of flashing ads; thank you Substack for no ads.
Kellogg's does ok - they sell 2.5 billion dollars’ worth of cereal a year. That brings me to our final rabbit hole for today. Have you ever found yourself in the Cereal Aisle at the supermarket. The entire aisle is cereal! No other aisle is so committed to a single product. Even snacky foods is like half of one side of an aisle. Why do supermarkets have an entire aisle devoted to cereal?! That’s a lot of coveted shelf space. Turns out it’s $40B market and surprise there is big time cereal mafia.
I discovered Marion Nestle watching the Netflix show Blue Zones about how to live to 100 (and be happy about it). Breakfast cereal is such a huge industry, I had no idea. I invite you to go down this rabbit hole yourself and start by looking at some of Marion’s writing on this topic here.
III Logo Pyramid tops the Waffle Venn Diagram
Let’s move on from Legos to Logos. I love them - little gems that pop up everywhere you look. It’s like playing Candy Crush IRL! Visual treats trying to lodge in your cranium and entice you to buy, eat, shop. Your business needs one - it’s central to your identity. If we were in Game of Thrones it’d be emblazoned on the banner you carry into battle, flying over your castle and carved onto the chest plate of your armor.
Logos are a key component of your overall business brand. If you imagine your business brand as a pyramid, the logo is at top. Like that weird floating eyeball above the pyramid on the back of a $1 bill. What even is going on with that? Super weird. Anyhoo, your logo is the culmination of all the things you want your brand to evoke. Like our Eggo example, such a pyramid would also have to be made of Legos and Star Wars. The Wirepine Marketing Pyramid©️ (WMP) will also be getting a copyright soon.
The Eggo Marketing Triple Play features three superstar logos slapped on a box of frozen waffles. Although that box is an abomination with too much disparate branding mushed together, those three logos are strong and interesting in that they each are grounded in words and colors - not usually my favorite. First you have Kellogg’s. Their origin story is back in the day Mr. Kellogg’s would sign every box. The stylized K is the signature element of the logo with a whole cereal - Special K - riding on the back of that stylized letter. It’s instantly recognizable and you betcha that signature red color is just as key. #D31245 and it hasn’t changed since 1955. That K is so strong they are bringing it over to both the companies they are splitting into.
Next we have Lego. The word comes from Danish ‘leg godt’ meaning ‘play well.’ The logo incorporates the word LEGO in a red square that evokes the basic Lego brick. Super simple and compelling - it’s nearly as big as the Eggo brand on the Waffle box so Kellogg’s knew.
Finally Star Wars. Suzy Rice - a designer in her 20’s came up with the lettering with some guidance from George Lucas that it be intimidating and fascist. The W got tweaked before release but otherwise it hasn’t changed since its introduction in 1977. That’s an odd thing about logos. The famous Nike Swoosh cost $35 from a design student while BP - apparently feeling the heat from Shell and Chevron’s nifty logos (see next section) - has the dubious honor of spending the most dropping $211 Million dollars on their flowery green and yellow logo. For when you want people to see a beautiful green flower not a ginormous oil company.
IV A Random Drive Down Logo Street
I often drive a stretch of busy road1 and I noticed it offered a fine selection of logos both good and meh. When you start paying attention, logos are everywhere and subconsciously you take them all in.
Let’s grade a few I pass all the time:
In-n-out: Strong brand recognition, great use of colors and font in the Yellow arrow & Red all-CAPS name. Brand carries over into packaging with cups and red palm trees, umbrellas, etc. I immediately want a Double-Double with fries 😋. Great Brand. Website is super clean also. Attention to detail with the hamburger favicon (that little logo that shows up in browser tabs) and on mobile, the hamburger menu (compressed menu element for smaller screens that’s usually just 3 horizontal lines) is a legit hamburger with buns hun! They even pull off using dashes as a branding element and that’s usually a no-no. The only ding is the chonky-ness of the arrow which limits the size and placement of the logo. A-
Shell/Chevron: The Shell visual is a winner; same with Chevron. Putting them together as they are in the same industry, and I don’t need to spend any more time on Oil companies. Did you know Shell is a Dutch company? Chevron is Texas based and relatively recently doubled combining with Texaco. While I may not be a fan of their politics the logo game for both is strong - if you see either the Shell visual or the Chevron visual you immediately know the company. They are both simple and interesting visuals/colors. A
Safeway: Bay area company with headquarters down in Pleasanton. The stylized S which is really whitespace on a red field is just ok for me and they are other similar logos so it’s not super distinct or recognizable. I don’t have Whole Foods on this list even though there are a couple nearby, but checkout their ‘Kale Green’ site and branding - soo much more vibrant and inviting. Be better Safeway. B-
Starbucks: So good. From the color treatment to the detailed logo that is really simplified and now universally recognizable. Starbucks (do you know their ticker symbol is SBUX 🤑) was just getting started up in Seattle when I was in grad school. It was just another local coffee house at the time, and I did not foresee the ridiculous powerhouse they have become worldwide (nearly 40,000 SBUXs around the world now!) If you get up to Seattle go by Pike Place Market and check out the original Starbucks logo in all its glory. A+
CVS: Yuck; don’t like the weirdly squared off heart and basic block CVS letters both in the same red with no nuance. Meh, C-
EB Bank: Sonoma County bank, I think. Know nothing about them but they need to invest a little in their branding. I’ll take them over CVS; at least the EB Initials that make up the graphic part of the logo are connected in letter-art of sorts and they incorporate their name and logo nicely but the signage on the banks is old and uninspired. There is a maintenance aspect with logos to keep them modern and relevant and EB Bank’s needs a refresh. C
V A Logo for your Business
The easiest way to go for a small business is wrap some letters - your initials or those of your company - around some shape maybe related to your shop or trade, fill it in with your favorite color and call it a day. While you can make an ok logo with this approach you can do better.
Words aren’t enough to make a brand recognizable or evoke any kind of emotion or connection. You need something that sticks in peoples head, so they remember you when they need what you’ve got. For example, I worked with a plumber whose business was LJ Plumbing. LJ being his initials and that’s what his company, domain and logo were. Just the words. Fine, he did good work and word-of-mouth was working for him. Then saw a plumbing van on the freeway - Monkey Wrench plumbing. It had this very cool Monkey graphic and of course everyone associates a wrench with plumbing, and it was a nice circular logo with strong color accents. I remember Monkey Wrench from seeing their logo once on a van. LJ? Not so much - I had to dig around in my email to remember the company name.
Even if your company name is letters or initials, you can add an interesting and memorable visual to go with it. Like that red stylized K in Kellogg’s. Most great brands have a visual element that’s separate from the lettering - all the grade A examples above - In-N-Out, Starbucks, Shell have a visual that compliments the name. If your logo does prominently feature text like Kellogg or Lego or Coca Cola, it needs to stand out both in lettering and colors.
Reflect back to the Wirepine Marketing Pyramid ©️ framework. The base of the pyramid is built up on your branding fundamentals - what principals does your business embody and how do they complement the goods or services you provide? What emotion or association are you going for when people see your logo? You want to evoke an emotional connection with your logo/brand and reach the top of the pyramid. It’s worth putting a little work into your logo to get there.
This is a reference to the book A Random Walk down Wall Street which is the seminal work quantifying why you should buy low-fee index funds for your piggy bank and and stay away from the random volatility of individual stocks even those in the safe haven of Waffles like Kellogg’s and Disney.