Does CAMRA need a new logo?Produced for BEER Issue 13 Autumn 2011 (p55).
British Airways and The Post Office, what could possibly be the link between these two organisations? Well, the answer is they both belong to a vast legion of disastrous logo re-branding attempts.
In 1996 British Airways with their expensively repainted aircraft tail-fins “representing a more international identity” very quickly fell to public backlash and a media contrasting their costly makeover with the “cost-saving” redundancies also announced at the time. Result? The Union Jacked planes were back in the skies, their new logo crashed and burned.
Forwarding five years to 2001 The Post Office Group blundered their way into redesign. Gone was the iconic crown atop words of Royal Mail in gold and pillar box red, in came, well, that multi-coloured circle thingy and the name Consignia; billed (or should that be posted) as “modern, meaningful and entirely appropriate”. After a £1.1 billion loss the logo, like unnecessary junk mail, was quickly binned.
These two British stalwarts learned a costly lesson here. Re-branding does not inspire trust, passion, or national pride, so does CAMRA need a new logo? The examples above shouldn't be ignored. If the brand isn't broken you better have a good reason for a new one. CAMRA has been an outstanding consumer success story. It's frightening to imagine what the alternative might have been. A quick look at the national site shows a very healthy 125,000 members and elsewhere CAMRA is noted as being the largest single-issue consumer group in the UK. Not doing to badly for itself I'd argue.
We need to beware of too much praise however, this isn’t the time for a round of backslapping, such would dangerously distract from the continued threat to our love of all things real ale. Does CAMRA need to divert precious time and resources to a frivolous exercise such as a new logo? Or in fact should all attention be used to mount a counter-attack against the combined foes of successive Governments hell bent on plundering the industry with monstrous tax and duty rises and the insidious anti-alcohol “health” lobbies who lump all drinkers under the same hooded yobbish garment. I think we know the answer to that one, and it isn't playing about with a drawing.
Thousands of us swell the ranks of CAMRA to rightfully promote their beloved drink, to fight an increasingly difficult rear-guard action against pub closures and to leave a legacy to a younger generation of which I myself at the tender age of 26 am included. New logos can be a success when done tastefully and intuitively but we should be fighting for quality real ale, not doodling your heritage into submission.
Roberto Ross
