If a logo changes every day, is it still a logo?

One of the few convictions I brought with me to Google, based on the two books I had read about branding, was that you needed to present your company’s graphic signature in a maniacally consistent manner; to pound it into the public consciousness with a thousand tiny taps, each one exactly the same as the one before.

This is our logo.
It looks like this.
If it looks like this, it’s our logo.
Because our logo looks like this.

So I was caught by surprise when Sergey suggested that he wanted to play with our logo on the home page. Remember, this was not only the most prominent placement of our signature logo, it was the only placement of our signature logo. We weren’t advertising on TV or on billboards or in print. The logo floating in all that white space was it. And we were hardly so well known in 1999 that we could assume people already had our brandmark burned into their brains.

But Sergey adamantly insisted that we should change the logo as he had done on Thanksgiving with his clip-art turkey and again when everyone went off to Burning Man.

“What about aliens?” he asked. “Let’s put aliens on the home page. And let’s change it every day. It could be like a comic strip that people come back to read.”

I tried not to be condescending to Sergey when I explained why this was such a bad branding strategy. I wasn’t alone in my opinon. There was general consensus among the marketing professionals on staff that it was wrong-headed and potentially damaging. And then, because I didn’t know him very well, I made the mistake of ignoring his proposal. As usual, I had underestimated his willingness and ability to implement whatever ideas popped into his mind.

Susan, whose garage was the first off-campus office for Google, had spent enough time working with our leaders to know it was better to investigate even seemingly ridiculous suggestions than to argue against them without data. So when Sergey asked her to line up a cartoonist, she didn't argue; she found Ian Marsden. Ian began cranking out holiday logos for us and created the first Google doodle (a multi-part logo that changes each day) in May of 2000. It featured, surprise, surprise, aliens making off with our logo.

Google’s brilliant branding strategy of humanizing an otherwise sterile interface with cute little cartoon creatures was an instant success. And as the online brand manager for the company, with responsibility for building Google’s awareness and brand equity, I had opposed it as adamantly as I could. That’s painful to admit, even now.

Credit should also be given, once again, to webmaster Karen, who created logos until Ian was on board and when he was not available. And it was Karen who cleaned up and reformatted Ian’s artwork so that it would work on our homepage. Karen also hired Dennis Hwang, who ultimately took on responsibility for the logo in addition to his other responsibilities as assistant webmaster.

One other person gets credit for helping out with the early logos. Ken Perlin, a professor at NYU and expert on user interfaces created a couple of java applets for use on the homepage in 2000. Ken had come by to give a tech talk, and people liked his work enough to want to have him create something simple for our site. He agreed, and sent us a bouncing heart for Valentine’s Day and an animated game for Easter. To show our gratitude he was given a gift of Google stock. I’m not sure how many shares went to Ken, but it’s entirely possible that line for line, the bouncing bunny code he wrote for us was among the most expensive in the world.

By 2002, Dennis had the hang of things and had established a perfect tone for the logos: friendly and accessible without being overly cutesy. As noted, we had formed a committee to ensure that we were commemorating a variety of holidays and individuals. Sergey saw the many happy emails from users and said, “This is good.” But he still wasn’t entirely satisfied.

The logos weren’t edgy enough for him. He felt strongly that we needed to have guest cartoonists come in to spice things up. And we weren’t changing the logo often enough. We needed more doodles with stories unfolding day by day over a week or more. A friend of his sent some ideas based on Little Red Riding Hood. In the last panel, the woodsman cut open the wolf, with blood spilling everywhere. Sergey deemed it sufficiently far outside the expected, but even he agreed it wasn’t a perfect fit for a family-friendly site.

So we went shopping again for a guest cartoonist. Susan had contacted Scott Adams in 2000 and he had politely referred us to his syndicate’s licensing agent. We tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes and Gary Larson of the Far Side. We deemed Gary Trudeau too political. Bill Amend of Foxtrot declined very apologetically. And we figured fat cats, giant sandwiches and little kids with guardian angels wouldn’t make the edginess cut.

I decided to give Scott Adams a try again. It was two years later and Google’s audience and reputation had grown considerably. I had worked with him on a project while I was at the Mercury News (he donated an autographed drawing we deemed “The Mona Lisa of cubicle art” for a trade show event) and I knew he was willing to engage in extra-curricular activities that interested him. This time, he said yes.

And of course, that turned out to be the easy part.

You may have seen Google referenced in Dilbert Tuesday, Wednesday and today. Scott depicts Larry and Sergey explaining the workings of their evil death ray to Eric and announcing their intent to crash the space station into Dilbert’s house so he can’t start a rival search engine.

The series demonstrates two things: Scott really is not a great caricaturist (Larry is kind of recognizable but Sergey looks like an anorexic Charlie Brown and Eric could pass for Tom DeLay) and you should never piss off a guy who has a daily comic strip that runs in 2,500 papers worldwide.

In my next post, I’ll explain why Scott might want to tweak Google’s management and why no other cartoonist has ever been invited to do a guest shot on Google’s home page, and probably never will be.

See you in the funny papers.