When Hermes Became Evri: The Rebrand Nobody Asked For

Has anyone else had that sinking feeling when you get a text message telling you your parcel is “out for delivery with Hermes”?

Well, the good news is that an end to that specific type of existential dread comes courtesy of a new brand name and logo. Hermes, Britain’s most reliably unreliable courier, has now rebranded as Evri. And with that, the missing parcels, the hurled-over-the-gate deliveries, and the legendary customer (dis)service are apparently all behind us now.

Because it was just the name that was the problem, wasn’t it.

Why Did Hermes Need to Rebrand?

Let me back up a little, because the “why” here is actually more interesting than the “what”.

At Christmas 2021 –  prime parcel season, when courier companies are most visible and most tested – The Times ran an undercover investigation at a Hermes sorting facility in Buckinghamshire. It was, to use the technical term, an absolute disaster. The reporters found demotivated staff, a chaotic culture, and couriers who were being paid as little as 36p per standard delivery. One depot manager, when asked about difficult customers, suggested staff should “act totally stupid”. Another courier’s advice for gated properties was, and I’m paraphrasing only slightly, to just “chuck the parcel over”.

The company had also come last in a league table of delivery companies produced by Citizens Advice. Last. And I experienced, first hand, why. I lost a parcel of expensive fragrances in Christmas 2021, Hermes were supposed to deliver it from a well-known high-street retailer. When the parcel of presents was late, I enquired and Hermes had “lost it”. When the retailer sent a replacement, the Hermes driver parked up outside my house whilst what looked like his girlfriend, sat with her feet up on the van’s dashboard, furiously tapping away on her mobile phone. No doubt selling my original parcels on eBay. Merry Xmas. love, enjoy the Versace.

Anyway, I digress. From a commercial perspective, tripling in size to £1.5 billion in revenues in five years will make a company grow too fast, hire in a hurry, and allow quality control to go the way of most Hermes parcels – thrown over your gate,

So the rebrand was, in many ways, inevitable. When your brand name has become shorthand for lost or damaged goods, the corporate answer is always the same: new name, new logo, new era, “new me”. Never mind actually fixing the problem at scale – we’ve got a design studio and a PR budget, haven’t we?

The Name: Evri

So, Evri…

It’s a phonetic spelling of “every”. As in: every person, every parcel, every place, every community. The design studio Superunion, who won a pitch to handle the rebrand, worked with the naming rationale around the diversity and breadth of the people the company serves. That’s fair enough as a concept.

In practice, of course, the internet immediately started finishing that sentence in their own way;

• “Evri parcel goes missing.”
• “Evri time I see they’re delivering my parcel, my heart sinks.”
• “Evri chance you’ll never see your package.”

You have to admire the inadvertent gift that name gives to anyone with a grudge and a Twitter account. The Hermes PR team must have been thrilled.

However, staying chippera bout the launch, Evri CEO, Martijn de Lange, declared the rebrand

“…more than just a name change;  it is a statement of intent.”

The new tagline? “Evri delivery made for you.”

Naturally, the comments on their YouTube rebrand video were closed.

The Old Hermes Branding

In fairness to the old Hermes identity, it was actually rather decent.

The Hermes name itself carries genuine weight; it’s the name of the Greek messenger god, the deity of trade, communication, and travellers. Strong brand equity there, on paper. The visual identity was clean; white text on that distinctive green, utilitarian in an honest sort of way.

The trouble, of course, is that the reality consistently contradicted that promise. No brand identity survives prolonged disconnect from the lived customer experience. Which is how a perfectly serviceable name becomes one you’d rather not see on your tracking notification.

The New Evri Logo: 194,481 Variations

Here’s where it gets genuinely interesting from a design perspective.

Superunion partnered with type foundry Monotype to create what might be one of the most technically ambitious logo systems attempted in recent years. Using variable font intelligence, they’ve built a headline typeface in which every character, A through to Z, has 20 OpenType alternate glyphs. Each one is entirely unique. The result is that Evri has 194,481 different logo versions! So every van across their delivery fleet can carry its own distinct logo artwork.

That is, objectively, a clever and technically impressive piece of work. Variable font technology being used not just for responsive web type but for physical brand identity at fleet scale is genuinely novel. I’ve been doing typography work since I got a distinction in my graphics and design qualification back in 1997, and this is not something you see often.

But.

And there is a very large but here…

The effect of all those variations is an identity that constantly shifts, morphs, and deliberately refuses to be pinned down. The logos look different on every surface. The letterforms are intentionally irregular and somewhat unpredictable, even a bit “ransom note” (the internet’s own description, not mine, though I can see why they landed there). They’re random and, dare I say it, chaotic. A mess, even. Is that a good subliminal message for the general public?

The Creative Review noted that the brand’s mutability seems to go out of its way to avoid letting the consumer form a fixed relationship with it. Which is a peculiar design goal for a service company that desperately needs to rebuild trust and fins reliability and consistency.

You want people to feel anchored to your brand. To recognise it, to associate it with a positive experience. The dynamic side of my nature sympathises with the “We’re Evri – Evri thing, Evri where, all at once.” But from a brand psychology perspective, that could also read that as: “We don’t want you to pin us down”. Which, given Hermes’s history, takes on a somewhat uncomfortable connotation.

The Ad Campaign

The rebrand launched alongside Evri’s first-ever TV advertising campaign, New Arrival, directed by BAFTA nominee Charlotte Regan for VCCP London. It debuted the same evening on Gogglebox and Coronation Street; solid peak spots, can’t argue with that media buy.

The ad itself shows a cheerful, considerate delivery driver building genuine relationships with the people on his round. Warm, human, community-driven stuff. Mediacom handled the planning and buying.

It’s a well-made ad. It would have to be, given what it’s being asked to do: convince people who have personally experienced late, missing, or visibly maltreated parcels that this is a new day.

The campaign will run for six months. Whether six months is enough to shift the ingrained associations of five years of Hermes horror stories is, I suspect, the more pertinent question.

The Substance Behind the Style

To be fair, and I really do try to be positive and generous, even when the design decisions are making it difficult, Evri did announce some meaningful changes alongside the cosmetic overhaul.

All self-employed plus (SE+) couriers, who represent 85% of the network, are to be auto-enrolled into a pension scheme by the end of 2022, with the company contributing 3% of earnings. Following discussions with the GMB Union, maternity and paternity leave rights are also being introduced for SE+ couriers from March 2022. A UK-based customer service team is being opened, with 200 additional experts closer to local depots.

These are, in isolation, genuinely positive steps from a commercial and ethical perspective. A £7 million annual investment in courier pensions is not trivial. Whether the operational culture changes alongside the structural ones is the longer-term question.

And a rebrand that accompanies genuine reform is one thing. But a rebrand used as cover for business-as-usual is quite another. The proof of that particular parcel will be in the delivery – assuming it arrives.

Verdict: Did the EVRi Rebrand Do Its Job?

Design should always serve a purpose. In this case, the purpose was to reset public perception, differentiate from the damaged Hermes legacy, and signal a new direction.

On first thoughts, I only give it partial marks. The name change is at least definitive. They can’t be “the Hermes people” anymore, not legally anyway. So it’s a bold attempt to draw a line under the old Hermes and start again. Nice try. But there’s a lot of, pardon the pun, baggage to, er, shake off.

Secondly, the visual identity is so radically different from anything in the category (And elsewhere, come to think of it) that it really does stand apart. However, OMG it looks a mess. Now that someone said “ransom note” I just can’t forget it.

And thirdly, and this is where I really struggle, a brand that deliberately refuses visual consistency is a strange choice for a company that needs, above all else, to be consistent. When your core brand problem is that customers never know what they’re going to get, perhaps an ever-changing logo that’s different on every van is going to send the wrong subconscious signal.

The name is easily mocked. The logo is clever but chaotic. The campaign is warm but asks us to forget an awful lot rather quickly. And the comments are closed on YouTube.

Not a disaster. But not a triumph either. At least not like Consignia, remember that one?

We’ll revisit the EVRi rebrand in a year or two. If the parcels start arriving, I’ll upgrade my assessment.