No Name Branding

Some time back we wrote about what we described as the 'no logo' trend. The article dealt with the fact that certain luxury goods manufacturers felt compelled to sell some of their products without any branding whatsoever, seemingly because Chinese consumers were eschewing luxury branded goods - which they saw as being brash - in favour of unbranded goods made by up-and-coming designers.  We predicted that this trend would not last.

According to a news article, at the 2013 international trade mark conference (INTA), there was an interesting discussion about something a little less extreme: how a number of major international companies seem to be ditching their brand names and simply using their logos to identify and distinguish their products. Starbucks and Twitter were mentioned as examples. You may have noticed how Starbucks has recently dropped the brand name from its logo, whereas in the case of Twitter the bird logo does appear to be playing an increasingly