Johnson & Johnson is signing off on a new logo.
The health care giant said Thursday that it will replace the well-known signature script it has used since 1887 with a modern look that reflects its sharpened focus on pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
The original script 鈥 based on co-founder James Wood Johnson's signature 鈥 will still be seen for now on consumer products like baby shampoo from Kenvue, recently spun off from J&J.
Johnson & Johnson itself to pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The new look, which includes a different shade of red, aims to recognize J&J鈥檚 shift into a 鈥減ure play health care company,鈥 said Vanessa Broadhurst, a company executive vice president.
The signature logo was 鈥渙ne of the longest-used company emblems in the world,鈥 J&J declared in .
But it started showing its age in an era of texting and emojis.
Many children no longer learn to write cursive in school, noted marketing consultant Laura Ries. People may recognize the signature, but they weren鈥檛 necessarily reading it, she said. The new logo, she said, is easier to process.
鈥淏ecause it鈥檚 easier, it almost even draws your attention to it,鈥 said Ries, who wasn't involved in the logo change.
Ries also noted people likely identified the script logo more with the Kenvue products they see on drugstore shelves, such as Band-Aids, Listerine and Tylenol.
鈥淓veryone washed their baby with Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo,鈥 she said.
A Kenvue spokesperson said the J&J branding on products like Band Aids will gradually be removed.
The signature logo also could be found on bottles of the company鈥檚 now-discontinued , which generated lawsuits alleging that it caused cancer. J&J has insisted that the powder was safe.
The consumer business helped J&J become the world鈥檚 biggest health care products maker, with annual sales topping $90 billion. But its pharmaceutical and medical device divisions had easily surpassed it in size when the spinoff was announced in late 2021.
New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J also said Thursday that it will relabel its Janssen pharmaceutical business Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. Its medical devices and technology segment will be called Johnson & Johnson MedTech.
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