New Ferrari logo vs Marlboro logo – Are they too similar?
Before …. I would make a clarification: I don’t smoke and I hate very much smoking! And, in this post, it’s not my intention to support and encourage this habit detrimental to health! Today I would just like to bring to your attention a clever design move: in fact, today we will discuss the similarities, accidental or intended, including the new Ferrari logo and the Marlboro logo. Well, I don’t know if you realize that Ferrari logo has changed. You can see in the diagram: it reminds you, by chance, another logo?! Well …. at first glance it seems that it was entirely plagiarized from Marlboro logo! The U.S. cigarettes company Philip Morris which owns the Marlboro brand, is the company that has always had a great partnership with the Ferrari F1 team, having been its main sponsor for decades. You should know that European legislation bans the cigarettes sponsorship on the F1 car! So, how do they fix it? Simple! No longer able to write that name prohibited by law, the tobacco company was the first to invent the concept of title sponsors, thereby strengthening the partnership with Ferrari and thus avoiding what would have been an economic disaster!
Until recently it was perfectly legal! For multinational tobacco sponsorship in F1 and other sports were a true “godsend” who carried in their pockets (and those of the stables!) large amounts of money. Then, with the new laws about it, things have changed and the companies like Philip Morris had to find some loophole to get around this problem. And so we come to “play” with the logo design, hiding in a creative and clever brand of the team with that of the cigarettes manufacturer. And the Ferrari logo and Marlboro case is more successful! Ferrari thought at the beginning of the famous “bar code” and kept this particular design over time until all the nations in which they ran in the F1 world championship dramatically abolished this kind of sponsorship. As a first consequence, there was the “flight” of cigarette manufacturers in F1! The new main sponsors were banks, phone companies, computer manufacturers etc.. Then they went away …… except Marlboro! The company, in fact, maintained its bar code on the Maranello cars. Therefore, the Ferrari also changed his name from Scuderia Ferrari in Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro! It was born the concept of title sponsors, which now belongs to every F1 team in the world. So, today….
At some point, however, the Ferrari was forced to delete the bar code design from the livery of its cars since, according to authoritative “experts”, was just playing so subliminal Marlboro logo! But, paradoxically, the situation is even worse in 2011. The image above shows how it was very easy to go in 4 moves from the original logo current logo of Marlboro to new Ferrari logo! It is treated to a clever design … but also marketing and anologie seem rather obvious. We’ll see how it will end. I wonder if some other “leading expert” or the Federation will force the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro to eliminate even this design by livery of its cars!