Nestlé and its ice cream brands. A continuing saga. I stumbled across their UK logo:

Now hang on, we had something else in Switzerland:

And in Spain (take your pick – the last time I was in Spain they had two logos running in parallel, or was it three):

It strikes me that Nestlé’s problem is that they have taken on lots of new (local) brands, all with different names, and this inorganic growth strategy has not quite filtered down to the brand management level. Unlike Unilever, which merged all of its brands under a unifying logo, Nestlé seems to insist on keeping the local name in its badge, to the detriment of uniformity.

Surely the best solution would be to
* remove LOCAL brand names
* remove LOCAL references to ice cream, helados, etc

But then we bump into their other problem. Because they have the big umbrella brand Nestlé, and it’s found on anything from baby food to mineral water (as well as lots of chocolates), they need to emphasise that this is an ice cream. Unlike Unilever which does not put its branding on the front of packs; it has separate family brands.

My suggestion: Nestlé, drop the names, use a logo and sign off with the names underneath.

They had the opportunity to do this when they bought failing Nuremberg-based ice cream maker Schöller, but – you guessed it – fluffed it (more: Schöller and Nestlé in Germany).

More on problems in expanding the Nestlé empire:
Problems with After Eight
Nestlé mismanaging KitKat
Nestlé, Schöller, and an unfortunate name