Rebranding?

Samsung is one of the largest electronics device manufacturers in the world today. In 1993, they adopted a new corporate identity which we are all accustomed to. In some way we are able to identify the brand somewhere amongst our daily lives, for me it's the Chelsea Football Club in UK.


The beginning of Samsung  
Samsung was founded in 1938 as a small trading company that made noodles and sold dried seafood. The name Samsung (삼성/三星), which means “three stars”, was chosen by the founder Lee Byung-chull who wanted his company to become big, powerful and everlasting like stars in the sky. 
 
<source: http://www.samsungvillage.com/blog/2011/03/did-you-know-three-stars-on-noodles.html>
 
For the sake of this post, my intentions are to look at the reasoning behind rebranding (or better known as changing your corporate identity (CI) before the term commercial term 'branding' was coined).

From a visual perspective, the reason is clear – the CI is outdated, and it needs a new look. But who actually determines whether a logo is outdated? It's not the design studios or leading brand agencies like FutureBrand or Landor...the answer is the people.

Ultimately, every logo today has become a commercial commodity. Unlike medieval times where the logo would be in the form of an emblem or crest to symbolize ones alliance (in other words ones identity). Should these people still be around, I would have good reason to believe that their emblems would be given some form of facelift.

The reason is simply the shift of of consumer attitudes that has evolved and shaped how we perceive brands. In the past (say 2000 years ago), we would hardly be given a choice between purchasing a table for our home. Our options were limited to simply what the carpenter would build in the neighborhood we live in. Now fast-forward 2 millenniums later, industrialization and globalization has presented us with options to choose a table from thousands of over designs from anywhere in the world.

Leading from the reason above, businesses simply had to adopt to this evolution to remain relevant to invoke some form of competitive edge. And this is the present society that we live in today.

Bearing those thoughts in mind, this would better rationalize a fair reason as to why Samsung had opted to change their corporate identity (apart from the reason that they were celebrating their 55th anniversary).


Fun fact: The first Samsung product sold under the company logo was Noodles.