Completely agree that a brandmark does not a brand make. And that fashion doesn’t lend itself to standing still so, maybe not the best example. While the sites shown may be commoditized, low-budget applications, one can find the same results within the DTC community.

As for the Netflix logo not being technological and culturally sophisticated, that was actually the idea. When it was created in 2000, Netflix was riding two, somewhat new trends at the time — DVDs and online shopping. Neither of which had mainstreamed. Not to mention an entirely new consumer behavior when it came to renting movies (subscription — which had a terrible reputation here thanks to Colombia House vs. single tansaction). So the idea was to make it feel as mainstream as possible. In addition we were content aggregators so we owned nothing other than our service.

As Netflix shifted strategy from content aggregator to content creator, and as smaller screens became more prevalent, the logo was transitioned to what it is today. I thought did a great job leveraging the equity from the old logo.