ITV's brackets logo is just dull and must've been dreamed up last minute on the way out to the pub on a Friday lunchtime.
Actually, there is a Tripod website template for free users which has a logo remarkably similar to the ITV logo, and with the bar at the end. I bet that's where ITV got there logo from.
I personally hate the word "brand", and the phrases "brand mark" and "brand image" precisely because of the confusion that it causes, not to mention the ideological shift in the way meeja types are taught in colleges to create and cultivate "brand images".
These days, a corporate logo will be referred to as a "brand mark". Until sometime that I'm not exactly sure of, but must have been sometime in the mid-late 90s, such a thing would be classed as a "trade mark". Case in point - the red triangle stamped on crates of Bass beer. Now, this red triangle, being born and bred in Burton-on-Trent, home of Bass brewing (forgetting the fact that the brewery was sold to Coors a few years ago) has been described many times to me as being the UK's first registered trade mark.
Now, in today's age, this would mean that a RED triangle would be the ONLY thing that could possibly ever appear on 'corporate' literature.
However, as I say, until that strange cut-off point in the 1990s, this would not have been the case, and rarely ever was.
A company, like Bass, would have a whole arsenal of 'branding tools' amongst their weaponry, and could use any one of those to suit the application. Which is why there was also a 'blue label' Bass beer with - you've guessed it, a BLUE triangle. In today's terminology, this would be "contravention of the brand image". However, in those days, it was simply a separately registered trade mark, as indeed was the swirly 'Bass' signature - which would either be used in tandem with the triangle (of either hue) or even on its own.
Marmite (also from my good old home town) is another good example. The 'red ribbon' MARMITE strap is one trademark, the brass jar and spoon (what? Don't know what I mean? Dig out a jar of Marmite and look the lower part of the front label) are two separate trademarks. Which of those would you say is the 'brand mark'? I think many modern 'brand experts' would be split on this one, and all give equally convincing yet contrived answers, depending on the type of rationale that they choose to use.
Getting back to the world of television, let's think back to the 1980s. The COW on BBC1 (and indeed, all BBC globes from 1974-1991) all had 'trade marks' if you will (no doubt not registered) used purely to IDENTIFY (hence the word 'Ident', just to remind younger viewers) the channel by being as visually unique as possible. However, the BBC during all this time did have what you could truly call a 'brand mark', which were the sloping boxes reading /B/B/C/. However, this mark would only appear on corporate stationery, internal forms, paper cups and buildings. Even OB vans of course had the BBC coat of arms many years after that corporate logo had settled in, before appearing on such vehicles.
With all this in consideration, it is indeed rather pompous and 'new media' narrow-mindedness that leads the change of ident designs to be called 're-brands' everytime, and is also a symptom of the fact that such changes are made with increasing reference to advertising agencies and/or, dare I say it, 'brand agencies' (shudder).
I don't personally think there's a right-or-wrong use of the word 're-brand' in terms of whether you can class it as such if a channel changes its wording or logo design. The whys and wherefores of whether a change of logo by itself constitutes a rebrand may be argued until the cows come home.
I think people need to ask themselves this question - what type of trademark best 'sells' (or promotes, for a public service, non-commercially funded broadcaster) a product or service? Does that trademark *necessarily* need to simply be the parent company's 'brand mark' with a tag added, or something totally different? What does a company that provides a product or service class as its brand? The logo for its parent company, or the logos and names applied to individual products and services, all of which are different?
What annoys me is when you hear "Kellogg's" referred to as a 'brand', and "Kellogg's Corn Flakes" referred to as a 'brand' - i.e. in that this particular product, from Kellogg's 'brand', is also a brand. A brand-of-a-brand. Similarly, the style of lettering on the word 'CORN FLAKES' may be described as a 'brand' simply because it's the typeface and has the type of shadow/embossed effect that Kelloggs' marketing team decided to use, and also that the way in which the cockerel charicature is depicted is ALSO a 'brand'. The fact is, 'brand image', to my mind, can only be described as a unified paradigm of image and style matter, in which any manner of registered trade marks, creative typography and unregistered but maybe copyrighted cognitive images are used to create a 'house style'.
When BBC ONE changed from the 'red box' trailer style to the current one, all that happened was that identification visuals and the way of attaching the tag 'one' to the BBC brand mark were changed. That is all. If it were a genuine rebrand, the |B|B|C| logo ITSELF would have changed - in the way it indeed did in 1997. That indeed WAS a true rebrand, even though some elements of the BBC's output, such as its network news, did not change house style. That came later. However, most media pundits of today would have classed that as two rebrands for BBC News - 1, when the BBC logo changed but the underlying title graphic style and set didn't, and 2, when the BBC logo *didn't* change, but the underlying title graphic style and set DID.
In short, if I had my way, I would bar everyone in the media from using the word 'brand', except as a shorthand word for 'company name' (as in Asda-brand products, meaning products SOLD BY ASDA, regardless of whether their logo is green, red, yellow, black or white).
Masterbrand or Umbrella Brand = BBC Logo
Sub-brand or Brand = BBC One Logo.
Exactly the load of old... I was talking about. Who needs it? Everybody knew what a trademark was. They didn't have to be a postgraduate to develop one or 'consume' one.
No disrespect for you Martin, you're only bound to learn what Meeja Studies tutors see as current 'cutting edge thinking', whether or not I think it unnecessary. Unfortunately going with the crowd is, I understand, the only way to get into the business, and if you want to get in the business, you have to immerse yourself in it. Shame that those who think in a more direct way don't get in these days, but hey, there are other ways to make a living...