Facebook Changes Product Branding To FACEBOOK
5 November 2019
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Facebook is introducing new branding for its services and products in an effort to identify the company from its familiar app and website.
Instagram and WhatsApp are among the services that will carry the new FACEBOOK brand in the next couple of weeks.
The main Facebook app and site will retain its familiar blue branding.
The brand-new logo, which remains in uppercase, uses "custom-made typography" and "rounded corners" so the business's other items and app look different.
The branding also appears in various upon which item it represents. So, for example, it will be green for WhatsApp.
"We wanted the brand name to connect attentively with the world and individuals in it," Facebook said. "The vibrant colour system does this by taking on the colour of its environment."
Facebook's chief marketing officer Antonio Lucio said: "People ought to understand which business make the products they utilize. We started being clearer about the services and products that become part of Facebook years earlier.
"This brand change is a way to better communicate our ownership structure to the individuals and services who use our services to connect, share, develop neighborhood and grow their audiences."
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US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she wishes to break up the big tech companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Google and put them under tougher policy.
This plan might be viewed as Facebook's way of countering, although Ms Warren - publishing on Facebook - said: "Facebook can rebrand all they want, but they can't hide the fact that they are too huge and effective. It's time to separate Big Tech."
Distancing the Facebook brand - the blue app that's home to practically everybody, including your parents - from the trendier Instagram, a place for you and your good friends, has actually always made great business sense for Facebook.
And it obviously worked: when Pew scientists asked research study participants whether or not Facebook owned Instagram or WhatsApp, 49% of American grownups were "not exactly sure".
So why would Facebook make this modification?
It brings a number of advantages. Front of mind: the firm is covering itself from accusations it conceals how powerful it actually is by not making it definitely clear they lag many of the greatest apps in social media.
And Facebook also wishes to ward off efforts to break it up, by making the case that the business isn't merely a conglomerate of different, distinct apps which might be quickly broken up by regulators. Instead, this rebranding argues the company is one big linked organism, called Facebook.
Facebook has actually come under criticism recently over a variety of concerns.
Its boss Mark Zuckerberg needed to deal with US lawmakers last month to discuss the business's policy on not fact-checking political adverts.
He also had to safeguard strategies for a digital currency, speak about the social media's failure to stop kid exploitation on the network, and was quizzed over the Cambridge Analytica information scandal.
Earlier in the year, Mr Zuckerberg said the firm was going to make changes to its social platforms to boost privacy.
These consisted of messages sent by means of Messenger being end-to-end encrypted, and concealing the variety of likes an Instagram post receives from everyone however the individual who shared it.
Does rebranding always work?
Several other huge business have actually tried rebranding in the past:
In 2001, British Airways turned tail on its plans to remove the red, white and blue Union flag from its airplane and replace it with "world images"
In the same year, Royal Mail rebranded as Consignia, only to switch back again a year later on
Dunkin' Donuts dropped the "Donuts" from its name in 2015 to try to move more into the coffee industry and its share price has actually continued to increase
The moms and dad company of Paddy Power and Betfair started trading under the new name Flutter Entertainment in May this year. It said the brand-new name "much better showed the variety of the group".
'If it ain't broke, don't repair it'
Manfred Abraham, president of consultancy Brandcap, told the BBC: "I make sure this will be a successful relocation for Facebook. After all, the moms and dad brand name stays strong, despite recent difficulties, and advising customers that Instagram and so on are all Facebook business will help with cross-membership.
"The rebrand is unsurprising as it is following a pattern - that of simplification. Many organisations are picking a strong, but pared-back visual determine and are brushing off 'flair' in favour of plain."
However, Mr Abraham believed Facebook was appropriate to leave the logo design on its flagship social networks platform as it is.
"Facebook's primary website does not need a rebrand. The old adage is real: if it ain't broke do not fix it."