I came across another company benefiting from the brand associations of another brand. We talked about this in regards to the Hyundai Genesis badge being similar to the Bentley, and Genesis benefiting from all of the luxury associations that come with positioning them selves closely with Bentley from a graphic standpoint.

Well this one is cross industry. The logo for Heys luggage has the same old coat of arms design as Porsche.

Porsche has the broader brand awareness, so Heys is the one that benefits by all the brand associations that come with having a logo similar to Porsche. Heys has pre existing associations like performance, high engineering, luxury and quality even before they run their first add. This is an amazing advantage, because Porsche had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to earn those brand associations, and back it up with 60 years of quality products.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you are building a brand, you need to capitalize on these associations so that you are getting a head start at building your brand to have those qualities with your customer. You don’t want to directly copy a logo, but to model your logo, graphics or architecture on that of other brands you want to be associated like in encouraged. But those associations are only stepping stones; if someone buys a Heys piece of luggage and doesn’t find the Porsche quality and performance, than they will quickly drop those associations they had. They will also feel duped or taken, and you will never recover them as a customer from that. Thankfully Heys makes very good bags.

Unfortunately you take the good with the bad. Hey’s has the Lion crest very similar to the Peugeot one. Now Peugeot has a pour reputation for quality, and if Heys was in Europe they may see that brand association as well.