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Brand logos refer to a set of symbolic elements that provide distinctiveness and communicate a company’s identity and values, helping consumers recognize and trust the brand. Recently, several global companies have begun experimenting with an unconventional twist—flipping their logos upside down—to signal creativity and differentiation. Adidas drew attention with an inverted-logo advertising campaign, and other brands such as Nike, New Era, and Supreme have applied similar designs to limited-edition products to create novel brand experiences. However, it still remains unclear whether inverted logos are perceived as bold and innovative or are seen as undermining brand consistency and creating consumer confusion.

Professor Tae Hyun Baek from SKKU’s Department of Media and Communication, in collaboration with research teams from the University of Massachusetts (USA), Peking University (China), and the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), examined how logo orientation influences consumer responses to brands.

Across four experimental studies, consumers consistently preferred products featuring standard, upright logos over inverted, upside-down versions. In a consequential choice experiment using a Comme des Garçons T-shirt (Study 1A), 74.7% of participants selected the standard logo. A follow-up study using a baseball cap (Study 1B) revealed an even stronger pattern, with 80.8% choosing the standard logo. Notably, these preferences were not explained by demographic characteristics or by consumers’ need for uniqueness, suggesting that the effect is both robust and broadly generalizable.

Study 2 extended the findings of Studies 1A and 1B to the context of social media advertising by identifying the psychological mechanisms underlying consumer responses to inverted logos. The results showed that the effect of an inverted logo on purchase intention was sequentially mediated by perceived unexpectedness and perceived rebelliousness. Consumers viewed inverted logos as unfamiliar and unconventional design choices that deliberately violated expected visual norms, which in turn led to more negative reactions.

Study 3 revealed that political ideology moderated the negative effect of inverted logos. Whereas liberal consumers were largely indifferent to logo orientation, conservative consumers exhibited significantly more negative attitudes toward brands featuring inverted logos. It is suggested that inverted logos conflicted with conservatives’ preference for orderly, conventional design elements. Thus, political ideology shaped how consumers interpreted visual disruptions in branding, indicating that unconventional design strategies such as inverted logos could be ineffective—or even counterproductive—for certain segments.

Taken together, these findings offer practical insights into the growing trend of global brands leveraging inverted logos. Such unconventional logo designs should be deployed selectively, particularly when they align with the political values of the target audience and with a brand’s rebellious, edgy, or innovative personality.

The research was recently published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, a top-tier SSCI Q1 journal ranked within the top 1.7% in the Business category (2024 Impact Factor: 13.1).

Baek, T. H., Yim, M. Y-C., Park, J., & Cho, A. (2026). Disruptive but costly: How upside-down logos backfire in consumer responses to brands. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services,  88, 104500.

鈥� Title: Disruptive but costly: How upside-down logos backfire in consumer responses to brands.

鈥� Journal: Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services

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