The Logo Trap: What Harvard's Logo Study Got Wrong

Harvard Business Review studied 597 logos and declared a winner, but we're not buying it. In this episode, rebranding experts, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders unpack why HBR's descriptive vs. non-descriptive framing is a useful starting point and a misleading endpoint. Yes, descriptive logos can aid recognition and brand processing. But collapsing logo strategy into a binary choice ignores everything that makes a brand actually work. Learn how theme and strategy work together to create identity that sticks. That's the real story. Not "is your logo literal enough," but "does your visual identity carry the meaning your brand is building?" Then get into the nuance HBR skipped: abstract versus distinct brand assets, the role of association in brand recall, and why the most iconic brands in the world (Nike, Apple, and Starbucks) didn't win by just being descriptive. They won by being deliberate. A logo isn't a shortcut to positioning. It's the output of it. If your strategy is weak, no amount of clever iconography will save you. This is the conversation the HBR article should have started. HBR Article: https://hbr.org/2019/09/a-study-of-597-logos-shows-which-kind-is-most-effective