Polk has brought back the heart and dropped the...

Polk has brought back the heart and dropped the “Audio” in a new branding and logo campaign announced Thursday that’s designed to bring out the company’s “friendly” side, Al Ballard, marketing vice president, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The company abandoned the heart that used to dot the “i” in Audio on its logo about 10 years ago, Ballard said. “The original logo had a following,” he said, but was replaced to be “more serious” with a more generic logo that “could have been an industrial product or a bank,” he said. The word “Audio” was dropped because “we don’t feel like we need it,” he said. “People who know the brand call us Polk.” At the same time, part of the rebranding is to reach out to new digital customers who know “little to nothing about audio,” he said. The company website has been overhauled, too, and now focuses more on applications than products. Consumers who discover Polk from seeing a product at a friend’s house or from a Google search can find products based on usage: in the home, on the road, personal and portable and in the office, he said. A consumer who learned about Polk headphones at a rock ‘n’ roll event can discover they can have a music system for their office, too, “an idea they didn’t have before,” he said. Polk will sell products directly from the new site, which it did in the past, Ballard said. “But we're not trying to be an e-tailer that’s in your face or offering discounts,” he said, adding that consumers can typically get better prices from a dealer. The first products to carry the new logo will be the SurroundBar 9000 and 5000 due out in September, Ballard said. Digital and print ads will accompany the re-launch, but Ballard wouldn’t put a price tag on the cost of the rebranding effort. The company is looking at new categories along with the fresh face, he said. Polk will expand its headphone line where “the tent is so large” there are opportunities for new products, despite the large number of manufacturers serving the market. The company is also looking at new areas such as portable Bluetooth speakers, he said. Polk worked with San Francisco-based Frog Design on the logo and branding with a near-term goal of reaching an “increasingly diverse audience,” the company said.