The "E" in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's newly unveiled presidential logo is a stylized American flag — as it turns out, one that looks remarkably similar to the logo for America's Best Contacts & Eyeglasses.
The company's CEO, Reade Fahs, said he doesn't mind but also that it's unlikely the governor hasn't seen the 18-year-old logo. "It's on hundreds of stores across the country. So assuming he's got good vision, he probably would have spotted it in his campaign travels. And we have lots of stores in Wisconsin too."
And there's one good reason Fahs is not angry about it — he says it's been "sure good for our business."
"Ever since the controversy erupted our online eye exam bookings have hit record levels," he said. But unlike Walker, "we're a one-issue company. Our one issue is ultra low-cost eyeglasses and eye exams and contact lenses," he said.
A Walker spokesman said the logo was settled on after an exhaustive process that distilled who Walker is and what he stands for. "There are thousands and thousands of people who use the American flag as branding," Kirsten Kukowski told NPR.
It's been dubbed #logogate on social media, where even America's Best had fun with it:
But Walker is not the only candidate with a #logogate this season. Here are some others:
Democrat Hillary Clinton was slammed for her logo, which contains a red arrow, pointing right. Some said it looked like part of the FedEx logo:
Rick Perry's branding has been said to resemble that of Popeye's Chicken:
And ahead of the 2008 election, some suggested then-candidate Barack Obama's logo looked like Pepsi's logo. Pepsi then tweaked its logo, earning criticism that it had used the Obama campaign's logo as inspiration for its own marketing.
"I'm not sure who followed whom," Frank Cooper, PepsiCo's vice president for brands, said in 2009. "But Barack, President Obama was relatively unknown a few years ago ... this logo he developed is probably about a year and a half old. We've been around for a long time."
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
