Walmart is known not for making rash, sudden, bold moves. Rather, its MO is to deliberate on big changes it makes, a strategy that has generally paid off over time for the largest U.S. retailer.
So it’s on brand for Walmart that its first logo change in nearly 17 years consists of subtle changes almost imperceptible to anyone not paying close attention. The logo touch-up includes thicker lettering on “Walmart” and broader stems for the yellow sunlike spark graphic that goes with it, one that is playing an ever greater role in its marketing.
The idea for Walmart’s marketing chief was not to radically overhaul the logo, but rather modernize it so it reflects Walmart’s big push into e-commerce and other digital offerings as well as its efforts to be a more fashionable brand that appeals to a wider swath of U.S. consumers, notably the more affluent, all without alienating its longtime customer base.
“I wouldn’t call this a rebrand, but really a refresh to reflect who we are today,” Walmart U.S. chief marketing officer William White tells Fortune. “The Walmart of today is very different than the Walmart of 2008, the last time we made a change in the brand identity. We are more modern, we are more digital.” In 2008, Walmart eliminated the hyphen in its name and logo—”Wal-Mart”—that for decades since its 1962 founding had been its trademark.
So now the blue of the background is a bit deeper, the yellow in the sparkle brighter and the Walmart lettering in the logo more filled out. These are not changes that would stop anyone walking by a Walmart store in their tracks, but sufficient to suffuse the logo with a fresher look.
“The changes are meaningful in terms of giving a little bit more life and energy to the spark, making it richer and fuller and giving it more depth,” says White. The new look will be implemented online this month and in stores over times.
The outgoing logo (on top) and the new logo (on bottom):
One of the ways in which Walmart has been trying to project modernity hipness has been through the apparel it sells. The emphasis used to be pretty much solely on low prices for basic items. But in recent years, Walmart has borrowed some moves from rivals like cheap-chic rival Target and the department stores to raise its fashion game. As detailed in a Fortune feature in June, Walmart for instance now uses visual merchandisers to showcase clothing with mannequins in its stores rather than just piling up clothes with basic signage showing everyday low prices. Moves such as those, and offering more organic food, have been key to helping Walmart win more business from households with income of more than $100,000 and thus outperform rivals with a 5.3% increase in comparable sales last quarter.
Still, the balancing act for White was to come up with tweaks that made Walmart seem cooler and up to date and adapted to the tastes of tech-savvy shoppers, without going too far down that road and risk confusing, or worse, alienating shoppers who by and large turn to Walmart for its low prices and staples. Constancy is its own message, too, after all.
An interesting shift in branding for Walmart has been to increasingly use the yellow spark alone in advertising with no other text, not even the word “Walmart” sometimes. At one point last year, in New York City, where Walmart doesn’t operate a single store, some bus shelters had ads showcasing fashion items Walmart sells with only stylish photos of those clothes, and the spark. Over time, the idea is to subtly shift shoppers’ perceptions that Walmart is mostly about inexpensive, mass product. “It is driving a reconsideration into who Walmart is and the assortment that we carry,” says White, who joined Walmart as CMO in 2020 after a long stint at Target.
Part of the hope for Walmart is that its tweaked spark becomes as instantly recognizable for representing Walmart as Starbucks’ mermaid, Target’s bull’s-eye, and Apple’s apple are for those brands.
“We want to show up in the way the iconic brands do,” says White. “We absolutely want the spark to be a beacon for the Walmart brand,” says White.
