Vicks and Crest Have Memorable Logos, While Duane Reade and Proactiv Struggle With Recall

When Sponsorship Research International polled 7,000 consumers in 1995 to see how well they recognized brand logos, it found that the McDonald’s logo trounced the Christian cross: 88% of consumers identified the golden arches, compared to 54% who could identify the religious symbol.

In today’s attention economy, the potency of logos is crucial, especially for brands that aren’t as ubiquitous as McDonald’s.

Research firm Frac.tl set out to find the most and least memorable logos for health and wellness brands, revealing how some logos dominate consumer recall while others struggle. The research was commissioned by healthcare practice management platform Tebra. 

“Building positive consumer perceptions and trust is especially important in healthcare—but you can’t do any of that if nobody remembers your brand,” Frac.tl senior data journalist Rachel Kirsch told ADWEEK. 

Kirsch’s team sat 100 people down in front of sheets of blank paper, then asked them to sketch the logos for selected brands strictly from memory. 

Here are four major findings on what divides memorable logos from forgettable ones.

Pick a color and stick with it

The most obvious difference between the most and least recognized brand logos was the presence (or absence) of distinctive colors. Consumers recalled Allegra’s purple logo and Pepto Bismol’s legendary pink far more readily than they did the black-on-white logos of, say, Proactiv and Duane Reade.

But Frac.tl’s study showed that less bombastic colors are also memorable, so long as the brand has used them clearly and consistently. Case in point: Crest toothpaste. As the chart here shows, while consumers might not recall the typeface or whether the letters are upper or lower case, the logo with the blue lettering and red “C” was top of mind.

Own a unique visual element

According to data from NielsenIQ, 90% of American households purchase vitamins and supplements, which has made the “super category” worth $13.5 billion. But so many brands vie for attention that even the top five brands have only a 25% market share. And so brand recognition is obviously critical—but why does Centrum’s logo have nearly double the recognition rate of Airborne (48% versus 26%)?

“Everyone knows that Centrum has a rainbow—they’ve got a lock on that,” Kirsch said. “Did [our test subjects] know where that rainbow goes or how it’s styled? Not really. But it’s close enough.”

Shapes are great—but keep them simple

Another feature that made a big difference in terms of consumer recall was a unique shape associated with the brand’s name—such as the rounded isosceles triangle (call it a guitar pick) belonging to cough and cold remedy Vicks. Nearly all respondents asked to draw the Vicks logo reproduced its signature grass green and most of them could conjure the shape as well. “Having that simple statement like the guitar pick performs much better than fancy illustrations that some of the brands have,” said Kirsch.

Tweak at your peril

Rite Aid is an exemplar for another maxim to emerge from Frac.tl’s research: Don’t mess around with your logo design unless you absolutely have to. In 2020, the pharmacy chain retired its seminal red and blue shield bearing its name that had been its badge since going public in 1966. Replacing it was a scaled down silhouette containing a pharmacist’s mortar and pestle along with a three-leafed sprig to symbolize natural remedies. 

But most subjects drew the old Rite Aid logo instead. “They had already done a great job establishing their old logo,” Kirsch said. “I don’t know that such a drastic [design] change was required.”

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