Can Tesco pull off going ‘logoless’?
Tesco’s latest out-of-home (OOH) campaign, crafted by BBH London, breaks one of branding's sacred rules: don’t mess with the logo.
Tesco’s latest “ICONS” campaign sees the retail giant strip away its logo, replacing each letter of the brand name with tasty looking images of food, including tomatoes and fried eggs. It made us hungry, but does it work conceptually?
BBH London clearly has a high level of confidence in Tesco's brand identity.
The "ICONS" campaign strips back the fundamentals of the brand to focus deliberately on the quality of the food products Tesco sells.
The use of blue chevrons (a familiar facet of the Tesco brand) was a calculated move, however, maintaining a rudimentary part of the supermarket brand’s identity, making the subversion slightly less risky strategically.
Our take
As fans of playful minimalism, we like how Tesco’s logo subversion serves a purpose: allowing Tesco’s food products to speak for themselves. The photography is key here too, with a focus on the textures, colours, and shapes of the food to make it particularly appetising.
Like McDonald’s minimalistic use of its golden arches, or distinctive red and yellow colour scheme, Tesco demonstrates that its name can be reimagined—distilled into its core elements—while still being instantly recognisable.
We recently wrote about Coca-Cola in a similar context, highlighting how the brand increasingly subverts its logo to reset consumer expectations. But while Coca-Cola is vying to make you hyper-aware of its logo to make you conscious of its often overlooked importance in a familiar setting, Tesco is trying instead to make its logo notable by its absence.
Credits
Campaign title: ICONS
Advertising agency: BBH London
Chief Creative Officer: Alex Grieve Executive Creative Director: Helen Rhodes
Deputy Executive Creative Director: Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes Creative Director: Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes
Copywriter: Lawrence Bushell
Art Director: Luke Till
Head of Design: Liam Thomas
Designer Director: Miguel Sousa
Head of Strategy: Saskia Jones
Managing Partner: James Rice
Account Director: Millie Dann
Production Director: Rachel Clarke Photographer: Will Cooper
Production Company Producer: Kay Edwards Production Company: RARE/ At Collective Post Production: Wellcom
Image credits: Tesco & BBH
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