Leading logos - an invitation to chat?

The NY Times has announced: "Behold the new breed of corporate logo — non-threatening, reassuring, playful, even child-like. Not emblems of distant behemoths, but faces of friends."

Among several examples in the NY Times are these:

The article explains that the new logo's are, "softening the stern voice of corporate authority to something more like an informal chat."

In Learned On, Andrea Learned says:

"To me, this discussion represents a larger cultural shift I’ve been seeing lately, which reflects a different level of gender integration (for lack of a better way to put it at the moment). Big, traditional, linearly (i.e. male) corporate brands are getting an infusion of fresh perspective. The typically “feminine” style of thinking in cooperative and collaborative ways is now more heavily influencing corporate culture, leadership training, HR policies… on down to brand logo re-designs."

Yep, I'm right there with that but I don't quite follow Andrea's final comments:

"It’s a whole new, extra-tough business climate these days, and brands and consumers alike deserve the extra friendly flourish a little feminine thinking might bring to their day - shopping or otherwise."

Friendly flourishes might help us through the day, though there is more to it than that. It might feel 'tough' out there, but that kind of hardened, deficit mentality doesn't do justice to a new understanding of our global interconnectedness and (virtual) customer mobility.  

If we are not in a constructive, collaborative and caring relationship with clients, customers or colleagues then they will simply go elsewhere.  Our new ways of working are rapidly tearing down boundaries.  

And, despite what you may have heard to the contrary, it's still a very big world out there.