Brand Logos No Longer Sell – Just Tell That To Stussy

The fourth annual Brand Keys Fashion Index, a national survey of
fashion and apparel brand labels and logos, indicates that the power
of brand logos and brand extensions continues to decline.

When asked how important apparel brand logos and labels are to
consumers now versus "a few years ago," the majority of respondents (66
percent) reported that they are now less important. Of the 7,500 survey
respondents, almost 9.5 times as many said logos and labels were now
either "much less" or "less" important to them than said they were now
"much more" or "more" important. Robert Passikoff, president, of Brand
Keys said,

"Increasingly apparel brands do not generally resonate with the values
of consumers and as marketers do not support their brands in
appropriate ways, you can’t really expect to find that the brands are
more important to consumers. If you disappoint your consumers, you’re bound to see disappointing
returns. Look at the disappearance of the MLB and NHL brands from this
year’s list. The MLB steroid scandal did a lot of damage to that brand,
and the NHL didn’t even show up. You can’t disappoint your fans much
more than that!"

Meanwhile Stussy – a brand all about its logo – has filed suit in a California federal court against the Freshjive
company, claiming that Freshjive infringed one of their trademarked
logos. A group of t-shirt graphics designed for the Spring 2005 season
parodies various familiar corporate logos – including Stussy. As Freshjive’s press release says:

"The concept was to parody familiar logos of
corporate clothing companies within a similar genre of customers as
Freshjive, to allude to the mundane similarities of clothing within
this genre, the commercial artistic restrictions of even being in such
a genre, even to allude to the customers of this genre of clothing as
being "sheep" and buying into the fantasy of the image associated with
corporate logos, and specifically clothing companies (and the Freshjive
mark is no exception).  This is not a case of trying to gain
commercially off of another logo, but to make a defiant social and
cultural statement about the ludicrous nature of our commercial
consumer culture."

The Freshjive site has various links to several examples of how Stussy parodied other brands such as the Chanel, Louis Vuitton, the KISS design and logos. Maybe someone wants to tell Stussy the news?

Brand Keys
Freshjive

<links&img via  Agenda & Dexigner >