Lazy logo lookup?

Darla Mack pointed out this cool sticker company:

That reminded me of two other similar logos:

One old –

One new –

Which in turn reminded me of an older story:

There was a bank in Finland called:

It eventually got bought out by Nordea and so the logo is history. But the company did overlap with another financial company:

Nope. Despite the uncanny similarities in name and logo, Meridea is a joint venture between Nokia, Sampo (a rival bank), and Accenture. Uh, doesn’t Meridea sound like Merita-Nordea? I actually guessed the logo when I heard the company name. Freaky, huh?

Hmmm, branding and logos are hard to do, for sure. But, this whole thing highlights that sometimes we know what’s out there, see so clearly the differences in our own product’s proposition, but outside, it’s all the same to the user – they can’t tell any difference between the selections.