BHS and managing a brand

The pic's a drive-by of a store window. This BHS store in Glasgow city-centre is unusual in the city for having three sides, across one block and three streets. Two of the streets are one-way and the other pedestrian precinct. A really good city-centre location then, but not without it's geographical difficulties.

And it's these days BHS, block caps white on black, in a black box no less, with the three letters underlined in red. If I have it in the right order, there was British Home Stores, BHS, BhS, Bhs and now back to BHS. It's like a Mensa-test sequence where you'd probably be predicting bHS would follow. Contemporaries like M&S have gone with the letters and the full name, but not m&S or M&s. Boots has been Boots, John Lewis just that. Customers may remain loyal of course, but you'd better make sure the product quality is bang on - they'll remain loyal to that, but the key word in brand identity is 'consistency'.

A change of name for a bona fide reason is fair enough. British Telecommunications becoming BT as they search new non-British markets and go for more than telecoms makes sense. Royal Bank of Scotland becoming RBS group, yes, ok, get that. But a lower case letter here today, then a block cap tomorrow does nothing for consistency and seems to be the brand management equivalent of fidgeting. Pretty key then that they stick with the current logo, the current block caps. Actually, as they are exclusively a British firm, it begs the question why they would want to drop that word, to go with a traditional story. But the answer to that would be that only 'British' and 'Stores' are real for them, but actually the focus is on clothing first, home second, so the root of the changes is in not knowing what they are. BHS it is then, but as one final point, block caps in a 21st century dynamic of technical and digital suggest shouting. It's a troubled brand, surviving seemingly well on the high street, but in branding and brand management terms, it's frankly all over the place.