"What is the ROI of...a well designed logo?" For me (a consumer), absolutely zero. What do I care what some company's logo is? I don't, and I also doubt that I recognize most of them.
Perhaps you've seen the images of fake pennys, like this: https://technicallyeclectic.com/video-best-practices-details.... If so, you know what I mean; you could show me a hundred logos, and I couldn't tell you which ones are real, much less which of those real ones belong to which company.
And yet many companies spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decide what the best logo is, and then a few years later they decide to "refresh" it, or "clean it up", or "give it a facelift." To which I say, waste of time.
A sample size of one, but, I was able to pick out the correct penny immediately, and coincidentally, I work in marketing (but more technical marketing than anything brand-related).
In defense of the brand folks I know, I don't think any of them would say that the ROI from a well-designed logo is your ability to pick it out against a fake one. Sure, a poorly-designed logo would be one you would not be able to recall, but maximizing ROI from a logo is not maximizing your recall of it.
When my company rolled out a new logo a few years ago, some of the biggest selling points were making it consistent and easy to use, particularly in conjunction with our product names, which reduced time spent by marketers working around a hard-to-design-around logo. It also focused on make our workmark clearer, which was a real issue because even a large number of our own employees mistyped our company name as CamelCase instead of two words, which has real implications for trademark defense.
Yeah, sometimes logo refreshes are unnecessary. But not always. More often than not _you_ are not the end user benefiting from the changes.
Perhaps you've seen the images of fake pennys, like this: https://technicallyeclectic.com/video-best-practices-details.... If so, you know what I mean; you could show me a hundred logos, and I couldn't tell you which ones are real, much less which of those real ones belong to which company.
And yet many companies spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decide what the best logo is, and then a few years later they decide to "refresh" it, or "clean it up", or "give it a facelift." To which I say, waste of time.