Tesco logo - unique, simple, impactful

The Tesco logo takes top marks for uniqueness, simplicity and impact.  

The origin of the Tesco logo comes from Sir Jack Cohen joining forces with T.E. Stockwell to consolidate his success in market retailing. Then, as now, the, logo of Tesco was simply its name. The first shop with "Tesco" emblazoned above the window opened in 1929.

The uniqueness of the logo comes from the strangeness of the name. What other word in English sound like Tesco? You can imagine it being derived from two very positive words : "test" and "company". So part of its impact is probably a subliminal amalgam of these positive words. 

The simplicity of the Logo comes from it just being a name. The untrendy might see the Nike flash but not realise that it belongs to Nike. This does not matter much to Nike, trendy young people are its target market. But Tesco's market is everyone. So it needs a logo that can be recognised by all kinds of people--and what is better for this than its name?

If you look at the Tesco logo in the left margin you can see how the company does everything to stress the name. The letters are red, bold and upper case. Even each individual letter is underlined! To advertise its services,  "direct" and "personal finance" they are usually tagged on with a different font, in lower case, and not underlined. This means that TESCO always stands out. The message is: the services are important, but the company is all important. 

TESCO are also masters of the "three word pull". You will often see the words "every little helps" appearing after the famous name in advertising. This has become so famous that if you ask any person in the UK what "every little helps" refers to they are likely to say "Tesco". They have some good variations on this thme, like "everything for Christmas". These tags always appear beside the Tesco logo, i.e. its name in less than discrete lettering.

Other companies have had trouble competing wth the uniqueness, simplicity and impact of TESCO. Sainsbury's is clunky, ASDA is too similar but not as good, and Waitrose just sounds too posh. Perhaps the most successful is Marks & Spencer, which reduces neatly to M&S. The original names are positive sounding (full marks!) and the acronym memorable. The conclusion is that anyone founding a company should consider combining names with their main partner to create a memorable logo, it worked for M&S and Tesco.