What is a brand? A brand consists of the values, both emotional and psychological, that a consumer associates with a company and/or its product/service. Branding is the process of creating a brand.
The public image that any professional association wants to project to the general audience is that it is reputable, law abiding, holds its members to strict, ethical standards, and gives you that feel-good impression that it exists to make it better, at least in the way companies market products and services.
The Direct Marketing Association ("DMA") released their "new" logo via an email campaign in an effort to get members to adopt it for display on their websites and other related marketing collateral. The new logo has lost all of its discernable features where members and non-members alike could recognize it as the logo of the Direct Marketing Association. It's new logo is horrid, flat, and plain. It evokes images of nothingness and uncertainty, which is disasterous for an established association like the DMA. It's now only one color with three typefaced letters spelling "DMA" with a right-facing arrow above it. The DMA president John A. Greco, Jr, says the new logo suggests that the DMA is forward thinking.
Somehow, I highly doubt this is why it was changed. Why now after all these years with the old logo?
It comes to one metric. Cost. Cost of printing thousands of personalized letters and envelopes to members every week. Members typically get 3-5 mailings a week from the DMA or on behalf of other DMA members about all sorts events, local chapter activities, conferences, specific subject seminars, etc. Multiply that by 4300 member companies, the anticipated rise in USPS postal fees, and the multicolor print costs skyrocket.
