WAL*MART changes logo, keeps crushing communities

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Monday July 07, 2008 · 8:47 AM PDT

2008/07/07 · 08:47

By now, you’ve heard that WAL*MART has changed their logo to Walmart*. Big deal. Where the old logo used to scream in all caps, with its central star, yellow happy face, and red and blue colors announced how much more American than everybody else the company was, the old logo uses a softer blue and yellow, as if to say, "Okay, okay, we’re going to be a store for cowardly appeasers now."

Well, this cowardly appeaser still ain’t shopping there.

At least the old logo was in line with WAL*MART's behavior over the past two decades. When company founder Sam Walton died in 1992, most of WAL*MART’s goods came from the US. Today, less than 30% does. In fact, 10% of all Chinese imports funnel through WAL*MART.

Many gripe over WAL*MART’s hyper-competitive undercutting of prices designed to drive out small retailers that have thrived in small towns for decades before the big-box arrived. And it’s a legit gripe, but a greater destruction is caused by this shift to Chinese goods. Where the small stores bought locally, WAL*MART does not, and regional manufacturers can no longer survive. And maybe you’ve noticed, but we've seen a lot of lead toys lately.

And kids chew on everything. Everything.

So to avert criticism, they’ve changed their logo. It now comes with a cute asterisk at the end, that implies "*We’re still going to:"

* Crush small communities by playing town boards against each other for the cheapest land and cushiest tax arrangements.
* Demolish independent competitors by using loss-lead pricing for everyday items.
* Exploit free trade policies by selling low-quality, lead-tainted goods from the lowest bidders in China.
* Treat workers as commodities by refusing to hire them full-time, allow unions, offer prevailing wages, or provide health insurance.
* Pretend that buying shiploads of styrofoam coolers and plasma TVs is environmentally friendly.

Wal-Mart's latest logo redesign is surely not its last. And some branding design experts think the new logo is just that -- a new logo and nothing more. "Will the logo help purge brand baggage? Will it make them cool? Not really," says Andrew Bogucki, principal at consulting company Corebrand in New York.

So they’ll still be the 600-pound corporate gorilla bent on destroying the independent business fabric of most of America and imperiling lives and livelihoods.

But with a cool new logo.

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