Xerox = copier?

Xerox announced it redesigned its logo. An unpredecented act that needs millions to implement? Why is Xerox willing to do so?

An interesting article in this respect was published in New York Times:

Xerox Hopes Its New Logo Doesn’t Say ‘Copier’

By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
Published: January 7, 2008

Still think copier when you hear the name Xerox?

The company knows that you do. And it is sick of it. Good grief, Xerox doesn’t even make stand-alone copiers any more.

These days, Xerox gets most of its revenue from machines that both print and copy, and that can be plugged into networks for use in offices and high-speed publishing. It has introduced 100 new products in the last three years. But it doesn’t want the Xerox name to conjure them up, either, given that services — like managing a company’s document flow — are a pretty fast-growing part of the product mix, too.

So this morning, Xerox unveiled what it says is the most sweeping transformation of its corporate identity since it dropped “Haloid” from the Haloid Xerox name in 1961. In a broadcast to employees, it announced that it would retire the staid red capital X that has dominated its logo for 40 years in favor of what Richard Wergan, vice president of advertising, calls “a brand identity that reflects the Xerox of today.”

The new logo consists of a bright red lowercase “xerox” that sits alongside a red sphere sketched with lines that link to form a stylized X. According to Anne M. Mulcahy, Xerox’s chief, that little piece of art represents the connection to customers, partners, industry and innovation.

Ms. Mulcahy insists that the Xerox brand already stands for all those things already, of course. But clearly she is banking that the new look will, perhaps subliminally, drive home the point that Xerox is, as she put it, “engaging and approachable” as well as “technologically savvy and eager to lead in the 21st century.” That’s a pretty tall task for a ball-and-X to accomplish. But Xerox points to a lot of research that says it is up to it.

The full text of the article is available here (click on the link).