Comedy Central: Rebranding Is No Joke (Or Is It?)

Howard is Marketing Director for Piehead (and often tries too hard to be funny)

With so many brands out there, bad/boring/ugly/unoriginal logos are bound to happen. Like Tropicana’s rebranding nightmare (search “tropicana branding failure” on Google and you get 134,000 results) or the more recent Gap debacle.

Based on initial reactions, Comedy Central seems like the latest victim. But then again, the cable network just might have the last laugh. Some complaints about Comedy Central’s new, copyright symbol doppelganger logo, created by thelab: It’s derivative. It’s boring. It’s meh. Meh isn’t so good for a brand that relies on being hilarious. Then again, the old Comedy Central logo was very cartoonish. Not exactly in line with hits like The Daily Show. And even actual cartoon hits on Comedy Central, like South Park or the revived Futurama, aren’t your average toon.

If anything, Comedy Central has become synonymous with timely, not just funny. From political satire on The Colbert Report to the latest in viral videos on Tosh.O, Comedy Central is about now. And what’s more now than media on the go? The new C within a C lockup looks great on tablets like the iPad, and works well with movement, key for today’s media that isn’t just about a TV logo in the corner of the screen:

So if you ask me, over time viewers and critics will start to like Comedy Central’s new logo. Or at least adapt to it, and return focus to laughing at the programming instead of the branding. At the very least, it can’t be worse than the SciFi Channel rebranding itself “SyFy.” Now that’s funny.