Drawing Famous Brand Logos From Memory: Europe Edition

By Joseph Myers

“I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me,” English playwright Noël Coward quipped. Fellow U.K. residents might not receive the same audience with the mammals, as a test from Adler Business Gifts showed that many of the 100 subjects struggled to recall the composition of 10 well-known brands' logos when asked to draw them from memory.

In the U.S., we live in a very brand-driven society, but life in Europe appears to be no less symbol-heavy, leading Adler to see how well consumers could draw the brand logos that regularly greet their eyes and those of their European contemporaries.

Such an entity-centric examination has precedents from the brains behind Signs.com, so it struck our curiosity to see how folks fared in handling the images of Aldi, BMW, Cadbury, Lacoste, Lego, Puma, Red Bull, Shell, Spotify and Vodafone. As we have noted before, the Louvre will not soon be coming for any artwork that we have produced, but we took delight in playing the evaluator of the drawers’ handiwork, with Adler placing the results in Least Accurate and Most Accurate categories.

100 People Were Asked To Draw The Logos Of Famous Brands By Memory. Most Of Them Failed Miserably - https://t.co/i2qBkPOcM1 pic.twitter.com/VH2bxy3nTi

— Digg (@digg) October 23, 2019

Adler then did us a great favor as students of brand logos by giving percentage-based reflections on the missteps by the participants and addressing the crucial particulars behind coming up with innovative logos that will resonate with audiences. “Developing a logo that’s unique, memorable, and resonates with your customers is one of the toughest challenges a business will face,” Adler said in reporting the findings. “Even for Europe’s biggest brands, an accurate recollection of their logos is hard to come by.”

Our industry work and interactions with promotional products figures constantly reaffirm the conclusions that Adler offers concerning its brand logos test. While consumers will likely remember goods and services far more than they will retain symbols anyway, it is quite common to pair those amenities with their signifiers, so as to form an enviable combination of great goods and solid visuals. So it makes sense to side with simplicity in attracting end-users. That is not to say that businesses cannot be bold when deciding on brand logos. They should, however, keep it in the back of their minds that Adler, Signs.com and other curious companies might one day put their creativity to the test by having people see if they have memories that rival those of Noël Coward and his elephant friends.

Check out the full article from Adler Business Gifts for the drawings and some fun statistics for each logo.