Energy companies alter tone, message with iconic changes - Pittsburgh Business Times:

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By contrast, Chevron’s traditional font seemds to her rigidand bureaucratic, with all that spaced in the middle of its O. As presidentt and CEO of the advertisingfirm , Fitting’z keenly aware of fonts, colors and pictures that companies use to communicate theie message or to change througyh a redesign. Of all the different reasons a compan y can choose to remakwits logo, Fitting said the only good one is to “staryt a conversation.” “For any industry, a logo is a symbol that gets imbuedr with meaning, based on the relationshiop of the company and its constituents,” she said. It can’ty tell the whole story of a nor shouldit try, Fittingh said.
But if a change in tone or imagee is what the companyis after, its icon can usher that in. Take Equitabler Resources, which has had its unassuming blue-lettered logo and fair-sounding name for until last month’s rebranding effort unveiledd EQT — the burgundy-shaded stock symbol with the tag “Where energy meets innovation.” All of its forms, business cards, annual reports, trucks, embroidered uniforms, hard hats and advertisin materials will have to be redonse to reflect thenew brand. It frequently costs largee public companies, such as Equitable, millions of dollars to changedtheir logos, according to advertising And after all that, why burgundy? Why EQT?
“What they might have chosen here is a colotr so different” that in a logo line-up with other energgy providers, the firm would have no said Kirk Littell, senior art director for . “I think they may have just triecd to be completelythe opposite.” In EQT’s bold maroon looks strange next to the blue of , Dominionm and . Blue, to translat e from advertising speak, means The color stands for “dependability, stability and longevity that’s why a lot of banks are blue, and law Fitting said. Green, of can indicate a company’s desire to appeatr environmentally sensitive.
’s rebranding success severalp years agobrought “organic elements” into the imager of a petroleum company, said “You kind of get the idea of a burst of energy,” he But while it alludes to green the logo leaves some ambiguity as to the And that might be the point, according to “If you look at the logos (for) CNX, Chesapeake, they speak to a particular kind of she said. “The trend, especially with new is they need to be a wholre lotmore flexible.” Fitting thinks the future at least the immediate future of uncertain regulations and economicsz — will force energ y companies to tout a more varied portfolio of products.