It’s a well known yet seldom followed saying – “Practice what you preach.” But when we considered the prospect of rebranding HRB, we knew we had to follow ourselves the same advice we preach to our clients … that the most objective and ultimately most valuable branding efforts are done with the direction of an experienced outside advisor. You can’t read the label from inside the bottle, right?
After over 15 years with the same “label,” a logo we affectionately call “Herb” because its three letters also resemble a face, it felt like the time was right to go through our own rebranding effort. When Herb was first designed and put to work as the face of HRB, our company and the business of advertising was considerably different. Traditional media – TV, radio, print – was still king. The Internet was in its marketing infancy. The iPad, iPhone and Droid were only the distant dreams of Silicone Valley tech heads. Twitter and Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg was still playing video games in grade school.
It’s a vastly changed world now. Digitally-based, incredibly fast moving, with websites considered as the first point of brand contact instead of merely an afterthought … and handheld devices putting the power of brand engagement in the hands of millions of consumers.
To acknowledge those big changes in our industry, we decided to make a small but important change for ourselves. So we engaged the services of FUEL, a talented group of strategically-minded designers, to rethink and redesign our logo and visual brand. We vowed to be good clients and provide them with all the input they requested (which was a lengthy process), then ultimately, trust their thinking and their visual concept for our brand. Frankly, it was nice to be on the client side for once.
What you see here, the new logo, colors and look is a result of that collaboration. For us, it’s an important reminder of the new thinking we need to consider and then deliver every day. To our clients, it’s a reminder that brands aren’t static entities that can rest on their laurels. To Herb, it means a well-deserved retirement.
Wherever he is today, traveling the world or spending his pension at a casino in Branson, Herb can be confident our new logo stands for the same product we truly care about delivering … growing our clients’ brands to grow their business.
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