Decathlon: Why do companies change their logos?

Here's a thought, when a company changes its logo, it is either because it is changing its line of products, its target audience, and therefore its target market, or it has changed its whole mission statement. So when luxury companies rebrand, as in the chart below:

It was, almost always to announce the arrival of a new creative director. But such is the musical chairs play of creative directing that the turn over is so far it was not even worth it to rebrand the shops, the labels, the collections, the bags and whatever all else paraphernalia that needed rebranding. Most of the press releases when a new logo is born stress words like "humanizing" and what not. The reason is more simple. Social media. You need your logo to be as 2D as possible to be seen in places like Instagram or Tiktok.

The wave of car manufacturers who reworked their logo to fit social media is below:

 Obviously, the "flatter" your logo is, the more visible and easy to read it will be online.

With this in mind, lately, Pepsi rebranded, with a beautiful new logo (here). Chloe (the fashion house) also has a new logo which harps back to its 70s iteration (a beautiful one at that). Zara did the same - for truly unknown reasons (here). 

Which brings us to Decathlon, the latest in the chain of - I am changing my image, won't tell you why, you won't feel any difference, but let's see if it works. The old and new logo are posted on top: Here's a funny story. A friend of mine has three kids - each has a different sport hobby. She often shops at Decathlon accordingly. When I whatsapped her the image above, her reaction was: Which is which? She had no clue which was the new one (OK, to make it easier the one below), even if as a customer if should be "top of mind".

Seriously however, why bother? Sure, Decathlon phased several of their own in-house brands keeping "just" 80. People do not care about the sub-brands and just know Decathlon to be honest. And if my friend's example is of any worth - not even that well. And yet, the exercise continues - barely a week passes without any behemoth announcing they are rebranding, changing logos, changing identity - yet, I see very little of it trickling down to how their products are evolving, or how their target audience is morphing, or their positioning is.

I honestly don't get it - with 1700 shops in the world, Decathlon is up for a huge investment in changing their logo and applying it on all possible and imaginable products. What for? I have no idea.

Pepsi has a new logo (again) - except this one works.

Well, here we are - again - Pepsi has a new logo (you realize we never say that about Coca-Cola).

But still, this one actually works. The 2008 redesign was - how can one say it without offending anyone - quite "effeminate" (although apparently it was supposed to show a smile). It lacked the presence and the boldness and the umph.... This one - with its throwback colors but also black central element - is a child of the older 1950 logo (and apparently used till 1986) except that, and this according to Pepsi execs, the black color that centers the logo is a commitment to Pepsi Zero. 

Whatever the rationale, it is not that people will switch in affinities between Coca-Cola and Pepsi (not that we have a choice in Lebanon, Coca-Cola has left the market outright - see here), but at least - at least - we got the logo we deserved as a continuation of the older generation which was rolled prior.

Now, I do wish Pepsi would - like their archrival - would stop with the chronic rebranding and settle on one identity. This new one they came up with is indeed lovely, why not keep it?