I recently found myself enlightening a couple of individuals who were visibly surprised that they had missed catching the fact that its no longer “Wal-Mart” or even “Wal*Mart” (in the U.S that is). The hyphenated version appeared in one of my reader posts as well. The worst part however was when I was sitting in one of the Brand Management Track programs that we were having and the speaker had no idea of this change. Besides the hyphenated logo was in use only till 1992 so its a logo that was 2 iterations prior to the one currently in use! Get with the times!

Back in 2008 WalMart decided it needed to revamp its logo/name (at least for the stores in the U.S to begin with). And what they did as part of their massively expensive campaign was to take out the asterisk symbol from in between the name and throw it at the end.

Logo Before 2008

Logo After 2008

Make no mistake you still say it the same (I’ve never heard anyone say “Wall Hypen Mart” or “Wall Star Mart” ever) but when you put up the logo or write the name try to avoid the “-” and “*” in the middle of the name from now on. If you take the time to go to Walmart.com see what logo they use in their corporate website you’ll notice precisely the logo they are using now and they want everyone to use (I presume). Furthermore if you try to access http://wal-mart.com , it automatically redirects you to http://walmart.com. All of this is part of the campaign back from 2008 and the shift that I am trying to highlight.

Nevertheless this is arguable one of the worst brand management undertakings if, even after close to 3 years, people still get your name/logo wrong.

For a quick history on how the logo has evolved take a look at this  (from Walmart Logo Timeline and Smartblog)