Everybody knows that most companies out there try to convince us all the time to buy their products. They tell us that we need their products in order to stay relevant or be happy. They do this through various means. Whether it’s through manipulative marketing, eye-catching packaging or through subliminal messages, everything boils down to two things: brand identity and marketing. However, there is also a more subtle approach: subliminal messages aka hidden messages.
In an attempt to demystify their subliminal messages we have prepared a short list of the most creative and sneaky logos out there with hidden meanings. Here are a few famous logos that try to win your money and loyalty!
Logos With Subliminal Messages
1) FedEx: FedEx likes to shine a spotlight on their speed and accuracy. In fact, they are so insistent on highlighting these qualities that they use subliminal messages to let you know just how fast and accurate their delivery system is! If you look closer, the blank space between the “E” and “x” forms an arrow pointing forward.
2) Toblerone: The famous Swiss chocolate bar that everyone knows and loves comes from Bern, a city known as “The City of Bears”. This is precisely why there is a bear hidden in the mountain picture. It’s quite difficult to spot. That’s because it’s only visible if you focus on the blank space that makes up the left half of the mountain.
3) Amazon: A lot of people believe the yellow line under the logo represents a confident smile illustration, with the “a”s representing the eyes of a stylized and subtle face. In truth, the yellow line is actually an arrow pointing from “a” to “z”. This is a clever and quite obvious way of letting the world know that Amazon is an online store where one can find anything from “A” to “Z”.
4) Pinterest: The main idea behind Pinterest is a very basic, yet useful idea, as one can clearly see from the popularity of the site: to be a means for users to pin web clippings onto their own online board. This is precisely the message conveyed rather subtly through their logo. If you look closely, you can clearly see that a pin has been hidden in the letter “P”.
5) Sony Vaio: Another clever and subtle example of a logo with a hidden message is the Sony Vaio logo. At first glance, it looks like an ordinary logo, stylized to a point that borders on the abstract. However, the logo is actually quite straightforward. The “VA” represents an analog signal, and the “IO” looks like 1 and 0, two numbers that represent a digital signal.
6) BMW: Perhaps one of the most surprising logos with hidden meanings is BMW. This is an iconic logo that the vast majority of people associate with expensive cars. However, BMW is less about cars and more about planes. Yes, airplanes! BMW has a background in aviation (it built aircraft engines for the military during WW2). And its logo stays true to that aspect of its history. The white sections of the logo represent a propeller and the blue ones represent the sky.
All things considered, subliminal messages are an integral part of the culture of big companies. Far from being used to control us, these hidden messages contain information about the history of the companies and their philosophy. What’s surprising about discovering them was the realization that they’ve been hidden in plain sight the whole time!