Anyone who’s ever tried to develop a unique name or logo for their product can attest to the difficulty of being truly original and relevant. Brands today have the twin burdens of being recognized in today’s fragmented media and avoiding treading on a competitor’s toes.
But what if the competition appears to have trodden on another company’s brand look? According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Peloton, the leader in the stationary bike fitness craze, is suing its nearest rival, Echelon, for infringing on its technology and its overall brand message.
The article states that “The stories companies tell investors and competitors matter.” The brand story a company tells its consumers matters, too, and part of that is the logo. Peloton is charging that Echelon has a similar name and design, so let’s put claims of copycat technology aside to focus on the branding.
From a graphic standpoint, the Peloton brand is appropriate to the company’s core product. The term peloton stands for the small group of cyclists who break away from the pack (think Tour de France). As branding goes, it’s elite sounding and it works. The logo is simple and concise: a forward-leaning “p” integrated with the pedals of a bicycle. You really can’t do much better than this. And it looks great in red.
And that’s the tricky thing about very simple brand marks — they either work or they fall flat. Or worse, they look derivative. Look at the Echelon logo: it’s a sort-of forward-leaning “e” with a dot, contained within a red circle. I get why Peloton would see it as a rip-off; it’s vying for the same energetic look using similar contours — and of course, red. But graphically, the Echelon logo is just meh. It lacks the boldness of the Peloton mark. I see the symbol as either a Pac Man-like “e” about to swallow a pill, or a human figure taking a tumble. Not terribly athletic. Even the word echelon sounds like they’re chasing #1 with connotations of ranking and levels. The similarity of the font style doesn’t help, either.
One could argue that any resemblance is merely due to both logos being red with some curved elements and a spaced upper case name. But Peloton’s lawsuit is grounded in the concept of trademark infringement. That means any attempt to borrow an existing brand’s language and meaning is a violation.
The real problem isn’t a color or a typeface — it’s how Echelon seems to have missed the mark in branding themselves. Technology issues aside, they haven’t created a unique trademark that truly distinguishes their product from anyone else’s. Their logo simply doesn’t tell the story well enough. As infringements go, this one is not quite borderline, in my humble opinion. But if their rival prevails in court, they’ll have to start from scratch.
