Know-How Exchange : Branding

I am confused about using people downloading your logo to put on promotional items as a route to being recognizable. It usually goes the other way - you provide a product or service that becomes recognizable and then your logo becomes recognizable.

To become/remain recognizable, logos should have some key element that stays the same, but other areas can change. Think Google and their doodle on the search page. The word Google mostly stays the same, but the colors, images around it and such all change based on current events or historical dates. You look at it and you still know it is Google because the word is there. https://www.google.com/doodles

"Is the only reason for a second logo for the possibility that people might wish to use it on promotional materials? If so, it's a bad idea.
Trying to get one logo "instantly recognizable" is hard enough. Two would be confusing.
If the second logo idea is more than a whim, then spend additional resources comparing the two logos on your target audience."

Thanks Jay.
I will try to be clearer about this.

Our main design is pretty much set. The design has a background color. And all sit inside a rectangular border.
One of our original team members suggested we also have a circular version.
That is, the same design, same background color, but sitting inside a circle.

The core logo is almost identical. One tiny detail had to be changed in order to fit inside the circle, but unless you had the two logos side-by-side you would never notice this small detail.

Yes the way the logo will hopefully become 'instantly recognizable' worldwide in the future,
is by having it available as a free download and having people become the 'promoters' of it by wearing t-shirts, tote bags, anything really they wish to do with the logo. But get it seen by as many people as possible.

We will also provide people an alternative of purchasing these wares with the logo already printed on it (if they didn't want to do all of that by themselves).

Of course we will also be promoting our website and the logo will be visible there too, but I consider that minor (secondary) to the masses actually promoting it.

"I am confused about using people downloading your logo to put on promotional items as a route to being recognizable. It usually goes the other way - you provide a product or service that becomes recognizable and then your logo becomes recognizable.

To become/remain recognizable, logos should have some key element that stays the same, but other areas can change. Think Google and their doodle on the search page. The word Google mostly stays the same, but the colors, images around it and such all change based on current events or historical dates. You look at it and you still know it is Google because the word is there. https://www.google.com/doodles".

Thanks for helping out Peter!
We are in a special situation. We don't have any products that we want to sell really.
We want to give away our logo together with the key idea behind it. If people buy into our key idea, (which millions will) they will want to get the logo promoted as much as possible (ie. get the most eyeballs on it as possible.

Yes as I mentioned above, the key elements would remain exactly the same between the rectangular and circle versions. Really it would be an outside shape issue. The core remains the same.

Still would like to hear any pro's and con's about this because we haven't launched our site yet, and could still go either way (rect., or rect. + circle).

Thanks!