What makes Landor the world's preeminent and most successful brand consulting and design firm? Without question, it is the eclectic blend of talented people who bring fresh ideas and enthusiasm to our clients - and to the workplace - every day.
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I was wondering, has anyone received my resume yet? I have not been contacted.
We have a resume processing/logging system that takes approximately two weeks to complete. During that time, we send out a Landor card stating that we are considering our present needs and have your information on file.
Internships:
I was wondering about your internship program. Do you have one and, if so, how does one get selected?
Yes, we do have an internship program. We will provide more information about getting an internship with Landor shortly.
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I am a graphic designer and would like to have someone look at my book. How can I arrange this?
Feel free to drop off a book, directed to the attention of Human Resources, at any time during business hours. We request that people leave their book at our office for three days.
Updated Job Listings:
How often do you update your open positions on the Landor Web site?
We update open position listings weekly.
Openings Still Available:
I saw a position open for ____?____ and was wondering, is that still open?
Please refer to the most recent job listings which are posted on our Web site and updated weekly. Our job listings are organized by our worldwide regions of Americas, Asia, Europe, and Middle East.
Our company was founded in San Francisco in 1941 by German expatriate Walter Landor. Widely regarded as a pioneer in the development of branding and visual identity as a strategic business tool, Walter steadily built Landor over the next few decades to become the first truly international branding and design firm, opening offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America and throughout the United States. Today, Landor Associates works with hundreds of clients on six continents, combining the resources of a global company with the access and familiarity of a local partner to provide a world of branding expertise.
1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | Present
Built in 1924, the Klamath was a working ferryboat on San Francisco Bay for 32 years. The boat was retired in 1956. Walter Landor found the Klamath sitting in the mudflats at the port of Redwood City, California, and purchased it at a bankruptcy sale for $12,000. After renovating the boat, he turned it into Landor Associates' home.
Past, present and future generations of Landor employees carry the creative legend and lore of the ferryboat. From 1964 until 1987, our corporate headquarters was aboard the Klamath, an innovative atmosphere that inspired the imagination of employees and guests. The Klamath rapidly became the destination of choice for visiting celebrities, dignitaries and Landor clients. Author Tom Wolfe once dubbed the Klamath "the flagship of packaging design."
In 1988, we finally outgrew the Klamath and moved to our current headquarters at 1001 Front Street in San Francisco. The Klamath is now owned by the Duraflame Corporation and is located in Stockton, California. Yet its image as Landor's own corporate symbol still remains an icon of creativity and innovation.
July 9, 1913:
Walter is born in Munich. As a youth, he is influenced by the Bauhaus and Werkbund design movements.
1931:
Walter leaves Munich to complete his studies at London University's Goldsmith College School of Art. At 22, he becomes founding partner with Misha Black and Milner Gray in the first industrial design consultancy in England, Industrial Design Partnership (IDP). At 23, he becomes youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
1939:
Walter travels to U.S. on behalf of IDP as part of the design team for the British Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. After travelling across the U.S. to familiarize himself with contemporary American industrial design, he decides to settle in San Francisco.
1941:
Walter Landor & Associates founded (later renamed Landor Associates).
1941:
S&W Fine Food is the new company's first major national client.
Back to History
1951:
Trans-Mountain Oil is first corporate identity program.
1959:
Sapporo is first Japanese client.
1964:
Walter establishes Landor Associates as social and creative center of San Francisco when he moves the company headquarters to the ferryboat Klamath. A two-day party to launch the floating office ensues.
1964-1987:
Walter works and entertains on the Klamath, which houses Landor's Visual Communication Center, Consumer Research Center and Museum of Packaging Antiquities. Celebrities, educators, marketing experts, corporate leaders and designers come from around the world to visit. Partygoers on the Klamath include Marshall McLuhan, Tom Wolfe, George C. Scott, Andy Warhol and the Grateful Dead.
1967:
Italian office is established with Montedison as its first major client, marking the first significant Landor project in Europe.
1968:
Levi's famous "batwing" identity designed.
1969:
Alitalia is Landor's first comprehensive identity program for an international airline.
Back to History
1972:
Tokyo office opens.
1972:
Landor establishes representative network in Europe. Countries covered are Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Benelux. Early major projects include a highly influential corporate identity program for La Caixa in Spain.
1973:
Cotton Inc. symbol designed.
1973:
Mexico City office opens.
1976:
New York office opens.
1983:
Landor wins SAS Airlines project, marking the company's expansion into the Scandinavian and Nordic markets.
1983:
Landor wins prestigious project to design the British Airways corporate identity prior to its privatization.
1984:
London office opens. Work is completed on a major dealership program for Mercedes-Benz.
1986:
Hong Kong office opens.
1988:
Landor conducts first ImagePower® survey.
1989:
Landor Associates acquired by Young & Rubicam Inc.
Back to History
1990:
French design agency Beautiful becomes Landor's new office in Paris.
1990:
Landor commences environmental and signage work for Expo '92 in Seville, Spain.
1992:
Identity designed for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
1993:
Identities designed for France Telecom and Casino, one of France's biggest retailers.
1994:
Clay Timon named Chairman, President and CEO.
1994:
Comprehensive global identity program completed for FedEx.
1994:
New holistic identity program completed for Cathay Pacific Airways.
1994:
Smithsonian's Museum of American History completes the Walter Landor Collection of Design Records and Packaging to document and permanently house Walter Landor's legacy.
June 9, 1995:
Walter Landor passes away.
1996:
Name and corporate identity created for Lucent Technologies, the $20+ billion telecommunications systems and technology company created by the "trivestiture" of AT&T. Lucent completes the largest initial public offering of stock in U.S. history.
1996:
Landor redesigns identity for Reuters, the global news and business information organization.
1996:
New identity and design introduced for Brazil's national airline, Varig.
1996:
Landor selected (in partnership with EvansGroup) to create the entire design program for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games to be held in Salt Lake City.
1997:
Landor's opens a full-service design and consulting office in Hamburg, Germany.
1997:
New identity unveiled for Brazil's Banco Bradesco, Latin America's largest private bank.
1998:
Landor conducts third ImagePower® survey, the groundbreaking brand measurement study originally conducted in 1988. The new ImagePower, focusing on business-to-business brands, is produced jointly with Louis Harris & Associates, the opinion research and polling firm.
1998:
Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, feature a comprehensive design program created by Landor, including the official Snowflower emblem and the popular Snowlets mascots.
1998:
Landor expands its portfolio, and launches branding and identity systems for clients such as Andersen Consulting, GeoCities, Iridium, ITT Industries and Hewlett-Packard.
1998:
Landor wins awards for its work with FedEx and Visteon.
1999:
Landor announces formal affiliation with Sydney-based branding and design consultancy LKS; opens new full-service office in Irvine, California.
Back to History
A creative visionary who pioneered the use of design and visual imagery as strategic marketing and business tools, Walter Landor helped create and develop some of the world's most recognized brands and corporate identities, including Coca-Cola, Levi's, Cotton Inc., Kellogg's, GE, Fuji Film, Saturn, Miller Lite, Alitalia, 20th Century Fox, Philip Morris, Singapore Airlines, 3M, the World Wildlife Fund, Pacific Telesis, Wells Fargo Bank, Dole Foods, Del Monte, Safeway Stores and Bank of America.
Born in Munich on July 9, 1913, Walter as a youth was influenced by the Bauhaus and Werkbund design movements. At 18, he decided to focus his career on designing for the mass audience so that the greatest number of people could benefit and "become more alive to what is enriching and enjoyable in our everyday world."
Walter left Munich to complete his studies at London University's Goldsmith College School of Art in 1931. At 22, he became a founding partner with Misha Black and Milner Gray in England's first industrial design consultancy, Industrial Design Partnership (IDP).
In 1939, Walter travelled to the United States as part of the design team for the British Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. Following the World's Fair, he crossed the U.S. to San Francisco, where he immediately decided to settle. "For me, it was a city that looked out on the whole world, a city built on the cultural traditions of East and West.... how could I live anywhere else?"
In 1941, Walter established Walter Landor & Associates in his small Russian Hill flat, with his wife Josephine as his first "associate." As his company grew, Walter became one of the first to use consumer research in packaging design, and is widely credited with establishing the economic value of design and effective visual communications in business. Over the next few decades, groundbreaking creativity backed by strategic thinking saw Landor Associates become the world's preeminent design firm, working with some of the world's best-known companies.
In 1964, Walter moved his firm to the ferryboat Klamath, anchored at San Francisco's Pier 5. The move to the Klamath greatly enhanced the company's reputation for innovation and creativity, and it also provided more space to expand the firm's design and consulting capabilities. Although Landor Associates eventually outgrew the ferryboat in the late 1980s and moved to its present headquarters at 1001 Front Street, the Klamath remains the firm's corporate symbol.
In 1994, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History completed The Walter Landor Collections of Design Records and Packaging to document and permanently house the legacy of Walter Landor's, and Landor Associates', contributions to American design history in the 20th century. According to John Fleckner, Director for the Smithsonian's Center of Advertising History, "Walter Landor's pioneering work in corporate communications, marketing, and the use of symbols and visual imagery is an essential part of the broader story of American culture and society in the last half century."
Walter died on June 9, 1995, at the age of 81.
Landor Associates is the world's most accomplished and internationally recognized branding and design consultancy. Offering a multidisciplinary range of brand strategy, design, employee engagement and business alignment, naming, interactive and research services, we help our clients worldwide create, renew and strengthen their brand power.
Our global network includes integrated brand consulting and design offices in San Francisco (headquarters), Cincinnati, New York, Mexico City, London, Paris, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Dubai, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Mumbai, and Sydney. Brand consulting and marketing offices in other major cities and regions include Chicago, Geneva, Oslo (Nordic Region), and Seoul.
Landor Associates is a subsidiary of WPP Group plc, a global marketing and communications concern based in the United Kingdom. We can, and do, partner with one or more of our sister companies to provide a seamless, integrated client service.
How to reach us
Contact or visit one of Landor's Worldwide Offices.
Send a message to Landor now through our online Contact Form.
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2001 Corporate Image Conference: Living the Brand Promise with Your Stakeholders
D&AD Tutors Programme
2001 Asia-Pacific Corporate Image Conference: Building Brands Without Borders
The 13th International Corporate/Brand Identity - Corporate Core Values and Brand Integrity Conference
Marketing Competitive Strategies for the Future: Adapting to the Situation
Center on Global Brand Leadership Conference - Brand Relationships and Experiences
The Marketer's Guide to the 6th Conference of Corporate Branding
Change or perish: Building competive advantage in Saudi Arabia
Presentation to University of Colorado, School of Business
The 2001 Latin American Corporate Image Conference: brand Building in the Era of Intense Competition
Landor Associates is the world's leading branding and design consultancy. Founded in 1941 by Walter Landor, we pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies which are today standard for the global branding industry. Landor takes a holistic approach to brand creation and management to help companies build brand power and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
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820 worldwide
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Alamo Rent-a-Car
Agilent Technologies
Asia at Home
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bmi british midland
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Coors Brewing Company
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Download our Fact Sheet in Adobe® Acrobat® format.
(PDF: 22kb / 6 pages)
October 9, 2001
Should Firms Abandon WTC Branding?Small companies debate changing their logos. In the wake of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, Landor's Vice President of Marketing, Hayes Roth, assesses the value of incorporating skylines into visual identities. "I would try to find something else that is more appropriate to what you're trying to sell, to what the attributes of your organization or company are."
On Designing the Twin Towers Fund Logo ...Managing Director of Landor's Seattle office, John Rubino, comments on the design work Landor developed for the Twin Towers Fund. "Because it was something we could do. We were thrilled to make an important contribution that answered a need at a critical time, and with the talents and skills we use every day."
June 2001
Key Bank Retail RevitalizationWhen KeyCorp. decided to review its retail spaces, one thing the Cleveland-based multi-line financial services company knew: It wanted its offices to look like more than just banks. So it enlisted the help of Landor Associates.
Commenting on Landor's 2001 ImagePower survey's findings, Dave Studeman, President, Digital Branding, notes that "...a company's brand can be damaged because it loses focus as Amazon has done by branching out into many other retail areas."
"A name change can help if there is a perception problem," said Amy Becker of Landor, whose company has worked on naming clients such as FedEx, Touchstone and Lucent. "But the attitudes and service mentality has to change. A name change without these other changes won't accomplish this."
Commenting on the process of brand building, Charles Wrench, Managing Director of Landor's London office, says that "Making a promise which you know cannot be delivered would be essentially dishonest -- we call it 'putting lipstick on the face of a gorilla'." Ian Wood, Director of Brand Consulting, adds that "Brand image is the difference between people purchasing your product or not -- a key element in making your company a success or failure. So it's important." To read the full article, download the pdf.
(Posted with permission of ABTA Business Travel)
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(PDF: 509 Kb / 4 pages)
"The idea underpinning (the new identity) is change," says Ian Wood, Executive Director at Landor. "It soon became clear that the company wanted something new and radically different from its previous identity."
"This is a response to both the changing economy and a response to perceived customer needs and expectations,' said Amy Becker, associate director at Landor Associates, an international company based in San Francisco that's been involved in several prominent name changes, including FedEx (Federal Express) and Lucent (Bell Labs).
Derek Johnston, Creative Director at Landor, joined the BBC to judge the finalists and select a winner.
Charlie Wrench, Managing Director of Landor's London office comments on the British brand. "The real ability of Britain to emerge with strength from the Foot and Mouth problem is a function of the strength of the British brand beforehand to celebrate the things we're great at and stop giving ourselves a hard time about the things that are not so good."
John Morgan of bmi and Peter Knapp of Landor Explain the Thinking Behind British Midland's rebranding in preparation for its Tansatlantic debut. To read the article, download the pdf. (Posted with permission of Aircraft Interiors International).
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(PDF: 1.37Mb / 3 pages)
"It's a crowded field, and the good names get taken early," notes Hayes Roth, a vice president at branding consultancy Landor Associates. "You end up having to go farther and farther afield." That's putting it mildly. Just look what some of the utilities have come up with.
It's essential for companies to have distinctive, unique but relevant brand names, says Anthony Shore, Creative Director at San Francisco-based Landor Associates, a branding-consultancy and design firm.
"We want to make sure they can live with the name, hopefully forever," said Anthony Shore, an official at Landor Associates, a San Francisco branding firm that helped transform the overnight delivery service Federal Express into FedEx.
Hotels "have to build a world so the brand becomes part of someone's life," said Jean Loo, a retail branding consultant with Landor Associates in San Francisco. (Registration required.)
John Rubino, managing director for the Seattle office of branding consultant Landor Associates, thinks that the purpose of using a quirky campaign like the Blue Man Group or the Bunny People isn't necessarily to elicit a purchase, but more to raise brand awareness.
The university is working with Landor Associates, a branding consultant and strategic design firm to make sure that its image reflects its purpose.
Craig Branigan who's the President and COO of branding agency of Landor Associates a division of Young and Rubicam believes that it's impossible to separate the concept of brand, from the reality from the reality of the consumer.
With previous versions of Windows and Office, Microsoft enlisted the help of Landor Associates, a San Francisco marketing company. John Rubino, head of Landor's Seattle office, would only say, "We worked with them on it..."
Landor, the branding consultancy, has been hired to find a new image for British Midland and a decision will be announced early next year.
"First I called those fine folks at Landor. Amy Becker's a naming pro with lots of candor."
Whether you're a member of the media researching an article, a potential client interested in hiring Landor, or a student conducting research for a school project, this is the place to access general information about Landor.
To contact us for any reason — to speak with a Landor executive for a news article, schedule a Landor executive for a conference presentation or obtain specific information about a recent branding program — here are the people who can help.
Corporate Public Relations
Americas and Asia
Mindy Romero
Landor Associates
New York
Telephone: (212) 614-5261
Mobile: (917) 446-4933
mindy_romero@landor.com
Europe
Stef Brown
Landor Associates
London
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7880 8316
stephanie_brown@uk.landor.com
Client Development
Americas
Hayes Roth
Landor Associates
New York
Telephone: (212) 614-4505
Asia
Michael Ip
Landor Associates
Hong Kong
Telephone: 852-2114-8118
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Artwork is available upon request.
British Midland is Europe's largest independent airline and the UK's second largest carrier. From its earliest origins as a flight training school for RAF pilots back in 1938, the highest standards of safety, professionalism and dedication to the well-being of customers has been second nature to the business.
The company has grown significantly since these origins, first extending its operations to become a UK domestic carrier, then to a European carrier, and now entering into the global flight market by launching a series of transatlantic services in Spring 2001.
Membership in the global alliance Star Alliance, the introduction of transatlantic services and an increase in the size of the fleet are the key reasons which prompted British Midland to ask Landor to review its name and brand, to identify key brand differentiators, and to develop these into a new global brand, resulting in the relaunch of British Midland on February 1, 2001 as bmi british midland.
Research and strategy
There are three principal drivers of change which typically underpin most re-brandings - technological change, deregulation or globalisation. In this context, the rebranding of British Midland is integral to the company's development as the business moves from being a strong UK/regional player into the global aviation market.
Landor's first task was to undertake a review of the British Midland brand through a major internal and external research programme. Much of this was guided by BAV (Brand Asset® Valuator), one of the world's most comprehensive brand research tools, based on the views of over 100,000 people worldwide.
Our research results showed that the British Midland brand has a strong heritage. The airline is clearly trusted, its staff are seen as genuine and friendly and it is perceived to have adopted an innovative approach to product development.
However, the research also suggested that British Midland was not recognised to be the scale of operation that it has now become, and that the old brand identity and name British Midland did not lend itself to developing a global airline positioning.
Add to this the fact that most airlines are, essentially, doing the same sort of thing, that carriers seem to have similar names, identities, facilities, products and even prices and it became clear that the new brand had to capitalise and build on its existing values and heritage, while adding the desired attributes to deliver a more compelling proposition.
In this way, they can offer something different yet relevant in a very competitive environment.
Solution
As the brand guardians, Landor's role has been central in ensuring that bmi british midland and all its agencies continue to develop on-brand communications, from in-flight entertainment and headsets, through to advertising and the visual manifestation of the brand, its identity.
The bmi british midland brand is centred on a new service philosophy, built on the existing strengths of the company - all based around a core offering of speed, with charm and style.
Foremost, bmi british midland is proud to be British, and as such 'Britishness' was an integral part of the brand's origin - an airline with its home and roots in the UK.
It's about being lively, agile and active. It's about being crisp, modern, understated. And it's about being confident, welcoming and engaging. It's stylish but not flashy or vulgar. It's welcoming but not overbearing or in your face. It's innovative but not gimmicky just for the sake of it. It's inclusive - not elitist or class conscious. It's flexible - not the begrudging 'stiff upper lip' of 'old' Britain.
In a market ridden with sameness, Landor has helped bmi british midland stand above the crowd in its next phase of development - going global.
James Hogan, chief operating officer of bmi british midland, says of the new brand: "It's a brand that works in the UK; across Europe; in the States; it is a brand that works across the world. It's a brand that shows change and development - but reflects pride in our heritage. And it's a brand for the future - for our next step forward as a global business."
Additional information
For more information regarding the new bmi british midland brand, please download an electronic brochure below:
If you want to browse the bmi british midland website, please go to: www.flybmi.com
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(PDF: 1.2Mb / 11 pages)
Read our recent press releases for information on our newest branding programs and other newsworthy initiatives.
London, March 6, 2001 - Global branding consultancy, Landor Associates, has completed a new brand positioning and corporate identity for the International Pharmaceuticals Division of one of the world's leading manufacturers of generic medicines, Alpharma Inc. This rebranding is part of a global marketing strategy to become the leader in generic pharmaceuticals. All companies within the International Pharmaceutical Division, including Cox Pharmaceuticals in the UK which was acquired by Alpharma Inc in 1998, will be known as Alpharma Limited from 1 March 2001. Alpharma Limited has the potential to produce up to eight billion tablets and capsules each year at its UK factory for supply throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The International Pharmaceutical Division of Alpharma has offices in 34 countries, 1,600 employees and manufacturing plants in the UK, Norway, Denmark and Indonesia, as well as a product portfolio with over 300 entries in the UK alone. The former brand positioning no longer reflected the full extent of Alpharma's operations. Against this background, Landor was appointed to revitalise the Company's branding both in the UK and internationally to lift it onto a platform which would enable it to compete in markets on a far larger and diverse scale than was previously possible. Landor worked in partnership with Alpharma to devise a Brand Driver™ - the unique, central concept which would power and unite all aspects of the new visual identity and serve as a building block for the entire branding programme. 'Accessible Medicine' was the chosen concept, reflecting Alpharma's desire to break down the barriers between medicine and people by making it more understandable, available and affordable to healthcare professionals and patients alike. Explaining the rationale behind the rebranding, Andrew Collier, Alpharma's UK director of sales and marketing, comments, "Understandable means that all product literature is being overhauled to ensure that both prescribers and patients understand exactly what is contained in the medicine they are taking and what effect the ingredients will have. Our products are affordable as they are marketed as generics which, by their very nature, are less expensive than branded patent medicines. Finally, through our sophisticated supply chain, we aim to ensure that prescribed medicines are readily available to all patients." Pippa Knight, Client Services Director at Landor, continues, "A rebranding which is aimed at making Alpharma's medicines more accessible means helping their customers - wholesalers, pharmacists, doctors and patients - to understand what the medicine is and what it does. In short, Alpharma wants to be in direct contact with the world it serves. This message will filter through all areas of the Alpharma business." The identity will have the most significant impact on Alpharma's packaging. A design strategy has been developed which provides guidelines for packaging for over 3,000 stock keeping units. The new design has already been launched in some European markets, with a UK rollout due in 2002. And, as lead agency and brand guardians, Landor was involved in the selection process to commission advertising agency Cobra.
The rebranding programme also features new guidelines to support the implementation of the new identity, corporate literature, advertising and a new website which can be found at: www.accessiblemedicine.co.uk
For further information please contact:
Stephanie Brown Landor is a global branding consultancy, responsible for creating and revitalising many of the world's most valuable brands and helping them to break away from their competitors through core skills in brand consulting, naming, design and realisation. Landor's experience includes corporate, product and service branding. Landor is part of the Young & Rubicam Group which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group, the world's largest marketing services group. |
San Francisco, February 1, 2001 - Landor Associates, the world's preeminent branding consultancy, has developed new brand positioning and corporate identity for British Midland - the UK's second largest airline. The unveiling ceremony is scheduled to take place today at London's Heathrow airport.
The airline - to be known as bmi british midland - has coordinated this launch with its aggressive move into the global aviation market. The corporate identity will be complete with the launch of bmi british midland's trans-Atlantic services this spring.
The new brand has been developed in preparation for bmi british midland's launch of long-haul scheduled services from Manchester to Washington, D.C. in April, and from Manchester to Chicago in May.
Landor began the project by conducting extensive research which established that the airline had many attributes on which the new brand has been built. These attributes included: a strong sense of "Britishness," with which the airline is proud to be associated; a friendly and professional service; and a real "pioneering" spirit.
As well as the general public, opinions were gathered from British Midland employees and industry experts. Feedback was analyzed to determine the perceived effectiveness of the airline's current branding.
Peter Knapp, executive creative director, Landor Associates, said: "The British Midland brand has a strong heritage. Our research showed that the airline was clearly trusted, its staff were seen as genuine and friendly and it adopted an innovative approach to product development. However, it also showed that the former British Midland brand was perceived as being too confined to the Midlands region and a strictly short-haul enterprise.
"This new identity will ensure that the airline has greater relevance to and rapport with its customers, given the changed demands which have been placed upon the organization.
bmi british midland is now an exciting alternative to its UK competitors, and the rebranding will help the airline to build preference and loyalty though distinction and differentiation"
Much of the research undertaken by Landor was guided by BAV (Brand Asset Valuator), a proprietary research tool developed by Young & Rubicam based on the views of 250,000 people worldwide. Landor assessed the views of a wide range of audiences - both internal and external as well as in Europe and the US - towards British Midland's existing brand offer.
The new bmi british midland brand is centered on a new service philosophy, built on the existing strengths of the company.
James Hogan, chief operating officer of bmi british midland, commented: "The rebranding focuses on the genuine warmth and hospitality which has been a hallmark of our staff, combined with the efficient, crisp and modern style that our customers demand. Our vision is to be the customers' airline of choice - a vision that will be achieved through the dedication and quality of all our staff. The new brand reflects our drive for continual improvement in this competitive industry"
The new corporate identity will be in use at Heathrow's Terminal 1 and Manchester Airport and on printed literature, effective immediately. Further branding will be introduced at Manchester Airport for the launch of trans-Atlantic services this spring. The new bmi british midland livery will be introduced across the company, including the entire aircraft fleet, over the next 18 months.
John Morgan, director of marketing and sales, bmi british midland said: "Today's announcements mark a major step forward in our development as a global airline. I am particularly thrilled with our new branding and identity. It captures our unique British values in a contemporary, enduring and approachable way, embracing the diversity within Britain today.
"The Union Flag is a critical element of that style. I am delighted to confirm that it will be prominent on the tailfins of our aircraft. All our research showed that travellers, from many different countries, respect our British heritage as a true mark of quality and service" Landor's Peter Knapp reinforces this point. "'Britishness' is an integral part of the brand's origin. It is a British airline with its home and roots in Britain. Customers relate Britishness to trust, professionalism, reliability and security. These are all essential values for being respected in the airline industry today.
"British Midland is already a significant player in the business, but few people realize the company's actual size or recognize its history of innovation," Knapp continued. "It is poised to become one of the first branding success stories of the Millennium and will also help fire the debate on issues relating to branding within Britain"
For more information:
I am sorry to report that Josephine Landor, wife of our founder Walter Landor, passed away on Saturday, January 27, 2001. She had a heart attack that took her quickly and simply. She was at a retreat in Big Sur. She was in good health and while it was a surprise to the family, both daughters believe that she passed on as she would have chosen. Jo helped Walter build this company and she remained a vital supporter after his death in 1995. Landor will make a contribution in Jo's honor to one of the organizations with which she was involved. A memorial service will be held in March at a time and place to be announced. The family requests that contributions in Mrs. Landor's name be made to:
Clay Timon Landor Associates is the world's preeminent branding consultancy, with full-service offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia. For over 50 years Landor has helped such clients as Lucent Technologies, FedEx and SGI create new identities and solve a wide range of branding issues. Landor's experience includes extensive work in corporate identity, naming, interactive branding, packaging design and branded environments. Landor is part of the Young & Rubicam Group which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group, the world's largest marketing services group |
New York, NY, October 5, 2000 -- Landor Associates' new corporate identity for the New York Stock Exchange spotlights the venerable exchange's bold, technology-enable vision of the future.
As the world's leading equities market, the New York Stock Exchange serves investors and issuers throughout the world.
Change, competition, growth and globalization are the powerful key words that define today's capital market. They inspire invention and enterprise-with the customer positioned as the ultimate beneficiary. Network NYSE brings the Exchange closer to their customers ... and their customers closer to the market. That's important because today's customers want more and expect more from the Exchange.
Network NYSE is an integrated, global, and diverse platform of order execution services and market information products. Designed with the customer in mind, Network NYSE is built on a foundation of the most sophisticated communications and computing technology-creating the world's most reliable market infrastructure.
Landor Associates is the world's preeminent branding consultancy, with full-service offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia. For over 50 years Landor has helped such clients as Lucent Technologies, FedEx and SGI create new identities and solve a wide range of branding issues. Landor's experience includes extensive work in corporate identity, naming, interactive branding, packaging design and branded environments.
Landor is part of the Young & Rubicam Group which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group, the world's largest marketing services group
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E-Mail: more_info@landor.com
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Recently, Landor Associates' award-winning work on the corporate identity for French media company, Pathé, was featured on the website of Adobe Systems, Inc. Landor's expert use of the Illustrator and Photoshop software tools contributed to a revitalized Pathé identity which will lead that company into a bright future.
Read the article on the Adobe.com website.
Landor Associates is the world's preeminent branding consultancy, with full-service offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia. For over 50 years Landor has helped such clients as Lucent Technologies, FedEx and SGI create new identities and solve a wide range of branding issues. Landor's experience includes extensive work in corporate identity, naming, interactive branding, packaging design and branded environments.
Landor is part of the Young & Rubicam Group which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group, the world's largest marketing services group
Why is there a company called 'Mercedes' and not one called 'Gertrude'? Why 'Bird's Eye', and not 'Frog's Nose', and why 'Caterpillar' and not 'Maggot'? Why do we use names - why not just use numbers? The reason is that all names have associated images, either cultural, linguistic or personal. Names are the handles for our psychological baggage. The complexity of names and their associations is such that a new profession has arisen to name companies, products or services. I was recently involved in helping name a new company myself. I also have a new baby boy. These two events are not as they first seem, unrelated.
If you ever attend a presentation on the process of naming a new company, product or service, you will conclude that it is a very complex - read expensive - business. On the other hand, because most of us have at some time named a boat, pet, or toy we assume that naming a child is a simple process. The near concurrence of the two events has allowed me to compare them and conclude that the naming of a company need not be complex, and that the naming of a son is anything but simple. In truth, they are essentially the same thing. If you have ever given something a name, you already have an implicit understanding of the requirements of a commercial naming programme. After all, you already know why I didn't really call my son Adolf.
There are minor differences between the two processes - the use of a formal procedure, for starters. A formal procedure has a series of steps, and formal steps need to be called something - they, in turn, need names. As a result, the commercial naming process appears to be complex because it involves things like Strategic Analysis, Positioning Statements, Free Association and so on. The similarities will become clear if we use the formal commercial procedure to name a child. Step one: Strategic Analysis. That is, the definition of objectives and the criteria by which candidate names will subsequently be judged.
Having now completed the naming programme for my son, I understand and can now write down the 'Strategic Criteria' I used, but I don't think that would have been possible during the process. We all - as amateur naming consultants - hold a fuzzy model of our criteria in our heads. We use the criteria to make decisions, but because we don't have to present them to the Board of a client company, we are never forced to commit them to paper. This is the principal difference between a family and a commercial naming programme.
The next stage of my programme was - to quote from a presentation on naming - "...to generate a large number and wide range of alternatives through work sessions, individual free association, and by access to reference material" - that is, talking to my wife, day dreaming on the train and getting some books of names from the library. Why are such a large number of names needed? Why not dream up a few over lunch and spend the consultant's fee on a decent bottle of wine? The answer is that there are millions of commercially used names, and that they are legally protected. It is very difficult to find a name which is neither in use nor protected - and this is particularly difficult if one name is to be used world-wide.
I may name a child after someone who exists, like Bobby Charlton, Linford Christie or Des O'Conner. This is not permitted in the commercial world, however - I am not even allowed to allude to an existing name. I couldn't start an airline and call it British Airways, nor could I make soft drinks and call myself Pepsi Cola. I would be spending my entire time in court defending my choice of name. Names can take many forms. They can be acronyms: IBM, BP or NBC. They can take the form of existing words or phrases: Shell, Apple or Eagle. They can be names constructed from other words: Spud-U-Like, Kwik Save or Dunroamin. And they can derive from the names of specific people or families: Ferrari, Cadbury, Guinness - or, in the case of my son, Ellis (this being my middle name and the name of my late grandfather). Of course, there are also many fine names which can no longer be considered appropriate because of the nature of the item they are famous for - amongst them Bloomer, Crapper and Durex.
As part of the process, all the candidate names are grouped according to their roots, or for the imagery they communicate. The image associations of the names are here compared to the image the new company wants to project.
Even small parts of a word can conjure up associations which help shape people's perceptions; 'alt' implies height, 'pri' implies first, 'geo' - world and so on. If a Mr Smith started a holiday company and wanted to communicate market leadership, then he might consider Altius, Prima or Maxima Holidays. If he wanted to be seen as fun and different, he may toy with Happihols, Fun in the Sun or Funkifull Holidays, and if he offered holidays of a more adventurous nature, Discovery, Free Spirit or Quest would all be valid choices. Any of these names would immediately give the consumer a good idea of the holiday on offer. The same could not be said of 'Smith Holidays'.
Informally, we all carry out the same grouping of names according to the imagery they evoke. It's clear that Ben, Bill, and Bert convey different impressions to Henry, Harry and Horace, or Quentin, Tristran and Perrigrine. The choice between these naming routes is one of 'strategic positioning'. The choice of Perrigrine gives a clue to the parents' nationality, ethnic origin, and social class - or maybe just their social aspirations.
There must also be consideration of whether to appear in the 'mainstream' with John, David or Stephen, or as a 'niche' player in the game of life with Egbert, Cuthbert or Tarquin.
Niche names can have considerable impact, as one brand of US cigarettes demonstrates. The American smoker of today has the status of a biblical leper: derided, despised and criticised from all sides. Response to this can be passive and conformist, or resentful and combative. There is one cigarette brand specifically designed for the latter: Death Cigarettes. At first glance, this choice of name seems a one way street to commercial oblivion. But the brand appeals to people who fully comprehend consequences of their habit, and resent the pressure to change. Faced with a choice of hundreds of brands, and with no overpowering reason to choose any of them, consumers select the only brand with 'attitude'. The logic is sound: the name might alienate 99% of the population, but could appeal to 100% of disaffected smokers. Naming your cigarettes 'Death' is like launching the 'Vauxhall Crash' or calling your son 'Sue' or 'Sod-of f'. I examined my 'positioning' and decided against a niche approach.
The next stage of the naming programme is the 'Suitability Screening' - a search for potential embarrassments. Car naming has provided fertile ground for such gaffes: in South America the Pajero, a Mitsubishi jeep, means homosexual. Nova, the Opel car, means 'no go' in Spanish, and in Germany the 'mist' in Rolls Royce's Silver Mist means excrement. These are not problems normally faced in the naming of a son, but there are others. The images of a name's previous holders have a considerable bearing on its suitability. Winston and Roosevelt have been popular, while Judas, Ghengis and Adolf are rather less common. There are also combinations and abbreviations to avoid: if your family name is Sutcliffe, for example, you would be advised to avoid the name Peter. The principle is no different in the commercial world: Delta Airlines would be unlikely to call a loyalty programme Frequent Traveller - that would be D.A.F.T.
Having drawn up a short list of potentially appropriate names, an 'Availability Check' is performed. In our case, this revolved around people we know well. It's just not done to give your child the same name as the child of your best friend or neighbour - that would be 'a clear conflict in the competitive set.' In the commercial world, availability checks can be done by specialist companies with databases of names currently in use world-wide.
Approaching the end of our naming programme, we went into 'Qualitative Research' mode. In the commercial world, this usually consists of a series of small groups controlled by a researcher, in which the name and its imagery are discussed and opinions sought. The members of these groups are often those at whom the name is targeted: thus, for a brand of washing powder, the likely participants are housewives. Our research was a similar and equally delicately stage-managed exercise, masquerading under the names 'coffee morning' or 'a swift half', depending upon the researcher. The results were collated and analysed over a series of breakfast meetings.
By now the list of names had been reduced to two, with Mother Nature given the final decision: boy or girl. After final selection, commercial programmes - where the Chairman's wife sometimes plays the role of Mother Nature- are usually completed with a 'launch'. That's a bit like an announcement, really - only there's more to drink. Fortunately, the launch rituals associated with childbirth share this fascination for alcohol.
After many weeks' work, our answer was 'Charles Ellis Wood'. Well, Charles is actually the legal name - his 'communicative name' is Charlie. Which raises a further issue - not every name known by consumers is the 'real' name of the company. 'Shell' is actually 'The Royal Dutch Shell Company Ltd', 'IBM' is 'International Business Machines Inc'. The model 'Twiggy' wasn't christened Twiggy either, but it seemed to stick...
The naming of a son and of a company are neither massively complex nor inanely simple - they both involve a challenging mix of logic, rigour and inspiration. In essence, the methodology and criteria are the same. The main difference is that in our case the recipient - Charlie - had no say in the matter, and that I had to buy my own Champagne. That's the game of the name.
This article was first published in Design Week (1999).
Five years ago, we had packaging designers. Today, we have brand identity consultants. Is this simply a matter of designers’ inflated sense of self-importance, or is there a genuine and fundamental difference in the way designers now approach packaging design? Certainly, today’s strategic approach to branding offers the designer more opportunities to contribute intellectually to the branding process, and to define the way in which brand portfolios are structured, rationalised, harmonised and extended. Designers’ input throughout the entire branding cycle is being sought as never before.
It was not ever thus. Two decades ago, the roles of creative and marketing departments were rigidly delineated, and it was common for marketing consultants to attend client meetings and simply hand over the brief to the creatives back at home base. Today’s more progressive design consultancies emulate the ‘partnership’ model of the advertising giants, where business momentum and immensely productive client relationships are built on symbiotic in-house relationships between those who sell, and those who design; for yesterday’s Saatchi & Saatchi, read today’s Newell & Sorrell or Lewis Moberly.
A further development is the blurring of role distinctions within agencies such as Landor, where designers and marketers are fully equipped to articulate the thinking behind each others’ work. A wider recognition of the instrumental role visual language plays in communicating the brand message has led to designers being encouraged to use left- and right-brain skills in equal measure. This trend will always be, to a degree, one-directional: while design directors are often put into pitching and selling situations, marketers are seldom called upon to actually design.
When did the designer’s brief begin broadening? Perhaps we are experiencing the fall-out of the growth of truly mass-media marketing throughout the 1950s and 60s, where specific product attributes lost ground to brand values as the primary selling differentiator. When Walter Landor said: "Products are made in the factory; brands are created in the mind," he was making a distinction which, to the packaging designer of the early ‘60s, represented a considerable shift in thinking. Product packaging does not exist in a vacuum, and is not simply about aesthetics. Every brand is comprised of a mosaic of values, and it is the role of the brand consultant to establish which ones of these represent the core, or essence of the brand, and which ones are merely peripheral. Today’s designer has more opportunity to participate in that definitive process, and has a greater measure of responsibility in visually articulating the brand promise. Most consumers respond to a brand as they would to a person, asking themselves: "Are you interesting? And will you bring me things that nobody else gives me?" If the answer is yes, they will ‘make friends’ with it. Beyond its functional use - the building of a sense of familiarity and association - a brand provides an emotional bond. Great care must be exercised when evolving it, as consumers generally notice when a brand acts out of character, just as they will when a friend suddenly wears different clothes or speaks with an unusual accent.
In view of this, it’s unsurprising that the designer’s responsibility to impart brand personality through visual expression has grown - it’s the logical streamlining of the traditionally two-step process of client to consultant to designer. Where a brand is targeted at a specific social group defined by age, interest or social attitude, it is not unusual for designers of a similar background to the brand’s target audience to create an effective design solution almost instinctively. It’s simply a visual version of a rock band like Oasis tapping into the zeitgeist, designing for the converted. Packaging design, however, is just one manifestation of the brand. Visionary designers today take into account all aspects of brand communication to make them work more harmoniously together. Extrapolating the brand throughout different media and at times into three dimensions (as in arresting promotional displays or themed stores) adds power to its delivery and gives it an additional ‘supercharging’ effect. With the designer’s additional responsibility for a brand’s articulation has come new and commensurate levels of power.
The traditional packaging process was, by comparison with today’s theories of holistic branding (well articulated by Paul Southgate in Total Branding by Design), quite one-dimensional. Within the modern branding concept, the brand symbol, or logo, should convey the core values of the brand, and embody its spirit as a type of visual shorthand. The logo for Terry's Chocolate Orange, for instance, incorporates an orange peel-style treatment wholly in keeping with the brand’s core proposition. Tango established a strong brand personality of taste explosion with its original orange product, and it was entirely in keeping and credible to add apple and blackcurrant variants to its range. Such a move would not have been credible for Fanta, whose origins are firmly rooted in its original orange-flavoured product; here, a less rigid set of values would enhance the brand’s ability to evolve.
Other pack elements - colours, graphics, typography and structure - should remain true to a brand’s values and should all help to build an emotional relationship with the consumer. This can be reinforced through other marketing communications media, but if the designer hasn’t clearly and correctly defined the brand’s promise in the first place, expenditure on other media can be wasted. How far beyond the pack can the designer help the brand? Recent work on ‘branded environments’ prove that enhancing the brand experience at every stage of a consumer’s retail journey can positively or negatively affect its success. Designers can reinforce a brand’s identity at various conscious and sub-conscious levels within the retail environment, and help prepare the consumer for the purchasing experience.
At the same time, closer collaboration between design and PR, point of sale promotions, merchandising, internal communications activities and advertising campaigns can create a formidable total brand proposition. The messages in each medium can be slightly different as long as they remain consistent with the brand's essence. Marketers should be working towards harmonisation, though not necessarily integration. Wolf Olins’ visual concept for UK telecommunications company Orange is a well-documented case of design and advertising working hand in hand to deliver a consistent and strong corporate brand identity. A different approach is marketing communications ‘segmentation’; Piz Buin, a brand which stands for both science and sex, is a good example, where the Lewis Moberly-designed pack communicates the technical performance of the product, whilst the advertising oozes sex-appeal. By the time Pepsi ‘Blue’ was launched, every member of Pepsi’s staff had received a copy of the ‘Blue Book’, designed by Landor to express the brand spirit in a compelling and amusing manner.
In all these cases, designers played an influential role in expressing core brand values and communicating them to specific audiences through specific media. Whether the design’s delivery is to be the whole brand story or a small part thereof, should be the aim of a well-defined design brief. Realistically however, it often isn’t: sophisticated though today’s clients may be, they are still waking up to the almost infinite possibilities of delivering messages through design. Perhaps the biggest opportunities open to the designer with a strategic mind are in identifying ways for a client to get better value for money out of design, by defining more specifically what the design should aim to do.
In this context, the principle hasn’t really changed at all: to get the right answer, you’ve got to ask the right question. And the most successful designers can do both, with ease.
This article was first published in Design Week (1999).
The privatization of the Brazilian telecommunications operators is the most significant marketing challenge to face one of the country's national institutions since the rebranding of Varig two years ago. Probably the last major privatization in Brazil this century, the personalities of the new companies, expressed through their brands, will greatly influence their success or failure with the Brazilian public in the new millennium. Two decisions are vitally important in the equation faced by Brazil's new telecommunications decision makers. The first is over how much to change their institutions' brand personalities. The second is how to do it, and how to express through the new brands just what role the institutions will play in Brazilian society in the future. These questions are not exclusive, but must be addressed separately and in a logical manner.
The issue of how much to change a brand is faced by all privatized institutions, not only those within Brazil. Looking abroad to Britain, where Margaret Thatcher's government began a wave of privatizations two decades ago, it is apparent that privatized industries - even if they have suffered from negative public images during their time as state institutions - enjoy a high level of support from consumers and corporate investors, who are only too willing to buy shares in them once privatized. Similarly in eastern Germany, where many previously Communist- supported state industries ran with high levels of inefficiency, Western investors are prepared to give them another chance in the form of significant investments. And one of the most significant and valuable investments made by the new management of these institutions has been in repositioning and rebranding the institutions to signal genuine change to their audiences.
Consider for a moment the role of a rebranding program in a privatization. A state- run telecommunications, gas or electricity company which operates inefficiently and expensively has little support from its public. Its brand image may be associated with delays, frustration and long-term failures to deliver against its promises. With privatization however, the interest of various audiences is raised once again. New investments in infrastructures, new management systems, and a new accountability to the public brought through privatization is enough to give Telecom Brazil customers a new hope that things are changing for the better. In addition, the fact that the new companies will now have to face competition is also encouraging for future customers. To convince the public that the organizations have changed however, they must demonstrate that their service philosophy has evolved, and that their attitude toward customers and their management styles have also improved.
And the most effective way of doing this is through their brands. The question is, how much change should the new brands communicate? It may be that there are brand 'equities', or aspects of the companies' images, with which customers are familiar and to which they are loyal, and which should not be changed. The only way the question of 'how much to change' can be answered is through researching audience perceptions of the current brands. And remembering that a privatized institution has many audiences - investors, analysts, the media and opinion formers, potential and existing customers - a message of change must be created which is palatable and attractive to all these audiences. Only through informed and intelligent research can a decision be made as to how much change should be communicated. It is also important that a rebranding of the companies addresses the issue of their ownership, given that the part played by foreign investors in their creation will arouse considerable public scrutiny. Here, the branding equation can be constructively balanced between the benefits of foreign investment, such as the international experience brought by the new owners to the companies, and the new global outlook and potential that this will bring the companies.
Once the first question has be answered, the issue of how to communicate change must be addressed. Here, the increasing sophistication of today's public audiences, along with a higher level of skepticism about the gap between corporate words and actions, plays an important role. At Landor, one of our key messages is that brand change is not skin deep, and that simply giving a company a new corporate identity or logo is worth nothing if it does not represent a deeper and more fundamental change within the organization. Branding is not about a paint job; it's about culture. Brazil's new telecommuncations providers will have to work hard to identify just what aspects of their organizations are actually changing, and what benefit these changes will bring to the general public. And in this respect, the branding challenges they face are enormous - because the actual role of a telecommunications organization itself is changing.
Today's telecommunications industry is characterized by two irreversible movements: globalization, and convergence of information industries. Within the past few days we have seen two more mega-mergers announced between AT&T and British Telecom, and between GTE and Bell Atlantic. Both these mergers are driven by simple expediency: all parties involved recognize that to survive into the next century, they need to be big enough and broad enough to provide global services to global companies, and tomorrow's global citizens. Moreover, the convergence of various high technology industries has created a role for telecommunication providers which was unimagined even 20 years ago. Brazil's new telecommunications brands will have to express not only the most basic communications services they provide, they will also need to be flexible enough to incorporate other services which they will provide now and in the future, ranging from Internet-based buying and selling, database and digital image transferal, and satellite-based, global information retrieval systems.
A new brand which simply says: "We put you in touch with your mother in Sao Paulo" is simply not enough. The new brand message will have to be "We can put you in touch with anyone, anywhere, anytime, get anything to them that you need to - and we are a pleasure to work with!" To complicate matters further, a brand cannot promise all things to all people - it will inevitably disappoint.The newly privatized companies certainly have big challenges ahead.
As consumer perceptions of the new telecommunications operators can mean the difference between their success and failure, the way their brands are managed - through their names, visual identities, advertising and PR strategies - will be crucial in helping them survive.
This article was first published in Gazeta Mercantil (1999).
1. Establish brand mobility. The Internet is becoming accessible universally and through many means, such as handheld devices. This provides an unprecedented opportunity for brands to stretch beyond traditional branding and marketing strategies. There are hundreds of ways in which your audience experiences your brand, each with its own set of challenges and limitations. The Web site is only one touchpoint.
2. Innovate by reinventing your brand - not just your product. New businesses, services, alliances and technologies do not always equal invention. Internet speed forces constant reinvention, while requiring companies to stay true to brand essence. Too often, the "latest" technology is employed just to be different and may not fit with the brand identity. The strongest brands, however, are constantly refreshing how they communicate who they are, what they stand for, and why.
3. Think for the long haul. The top ranking brands consistently reflect a top-down commitment to investing in the corporate brand as a long-term strategic asset. This means that the market has no tolerance for companies that start off with a bang and fizzle out. While the Internet has accelerated the pace of creating a brand, Breakaway Brands require continued sustenance over time by their companies.
1. Confuse first-to-market with innovation. Almost every brand being introduced seems to be premised on being new and different. What drives brand strength is how quickly brand strength develops its relevance. While first movers have a definite advantage, if they don't provide consumers with relevant differentiation, they will not continue to grow. Speed plays equally in both directions. Brands are growing at Internet speed, but they'll decline just as quickly if they don't stay fresh, relevant and distinct.
2. Confuse marketing for branding. Spending buckets of marketing money won't salvage a weak brand. A company uses symbols and words to build corporate values and brand promise among customers. Marketing is the way a company presents those symbols and words to end users. Without a strong brand proposition, no amount of marketing spending will attract and retain customers.
3. Fail to deliver on the brand promise. Keeping promises is more important than good intentions. Authentic and demonstrable claims must link back to the brand promise and companies must deliver on them. The Internet is an extremely unforgiving medium, and a bad experience is an irrevocably bad experience on the Internet. To endure, Breakaway Brands never make claims on which they can't deliver.
The term 'Eurobranding' is subject to considerable misunderstanding and varied interpretation. The term became fashionable in the 1980s when, along with the introduction of Europe-wide product regulations and relaxed border controls, the cost efficiencies of unified brand systems across Europe became a real and achievable possibility to manufacturers distributing their products in different countries under different names and packaging systems.
Yet while the global brands emanating from the Americas, Asia and in some cases Europe already had monolithic branding systems which worked in every cultural context, this 'first wave' of attempts to achieve coherent and consistent pan-European brands led to few successful programmes of brand harmonisation. What did smaller, more fragmented European brands need to do to manage the transition to consistent, cost-effective 'Eurobrands'?
The majority of these initial attempts failed primarily because of the dictatorial approach to the process taken by their brand owners, and because of their flawed attitude to their brands' cultural adaptability. Such programmes took commonalties between different European countries as the basis for all strategic thinking, resulting in a diluted, 'lowest common denominator' approach. This ultimately created bland solutions which appealed to no consumers as strongly as brands developed specifically for single markets. A brand solution designed through a series of compromises will not damage a brand in any one territory; neither, however, will it dramatically help its cause.
Moreover, the dictatorial approach, through imposing a relentlessly monolithic approach to branding, did not take adequate account of the varied thinking and styles of life that exist across Europe, and forgot the first law of international branding: research. New, consistent 'Euro-solutions' were introduced across markets without adequate local checks for cultural appropriateness.
As well as running the risk of alienating consumers in various markets, this approach also led to resistance within international marketing departments, as local representatives felt their opinions were irrelevant, their needs ignored and their roles threatened. If the company was going to introduce a common brand across Europe, why would it need marketing directors for Germany, Italy and the UK? Moreover, as communications and packaging processes were indiscriminately 'rationalised' (a euphemism for cost-cutting), the infrastructures for supporting brands at a local level, and in a way sensitive to local needs, were eroded. This left centrally-driven brand management processes badly out of touch with local market needs.
The resulting backlash to such heavy-handed attempts to create Eurobrands naturally focused on the fundamental issue of whether such a goal was even desirable, as marketing departments asked themselves: Do we even need Eurobranding? Why spend so much money on it? Is there any real, long-term benefit to a brand changing its name and design system, other than cost efficiencies?
WHY EUROBRAND? THE BENEFITS
The answer is yes, but only if done methodically and in an intelligently democratic way. Brands can increase their local as well as international stature through a successful approach, and for European companies seeking to defend themselves against big brands from America and Asia, and from strong European competitors, Eurobranding is the only realistic channel for large scale expansion in the years to come. Market consolidation through mergers and acquisitions has reshaped the international market in most product categories, and the emphasis today is even more upon expansion to survive.
Also, a 'Euromedia' of increasingly international advertising, satellite and Internet-based media has created a new generation of increasingly well-travelled, sophisticated and selective consumers with specific 'Euroneeds'. Now, more than ever, Eurobranding is a convincing strategic option for the packaging of goods.
WHAT IS A EUROBRAND - AND HOW DOES IT DIFFER FROM EUROBRANDING?
Essentially, the former has the goal of one brand name working across all of Europe, irrespective of its visual appearance. Diversified manufacturers often create Eurobrands by using a consistent name and logo across Europe for a product which is packaged differently from country to country. Danone, for example, markets BioYoghurt in France, England and Germany under the same name, but with different packaging; Persil laundry detergent and Kellogg's cereals also fit into this category. Eurobranding, however, may see a brand operating under a different name in different markets, but will incorporate at least one key common element - positioning, communications style or packaging design - in all countries. In the FMCG area, Eurobranding involves the progressive harmonisation of all the visual or verbal elements of brand packaging. In practical terms, this goal is often ultimately unachievable, due to trademark conflicts in certain markets, or cultural idiosyncrasies which render a name or design inappropriate. Yet the goal is worth pursuing as far as possible, as many of the benefits of the approach may be picked up along the way to full harmonisation. Partially harmonised brands, for example, benefit from international consumer recognition (if name or design elements are shared) and efficiencies in international promotions.
The ideal Eurobranding process is not one of compromises. It stems from the definition of a common thread which links a core brand proposition to a consumer benefit, in a way that can be powerfully communicated through design. It also involves people at the local level in helping create the unifying brand proposition, and gives them the flexibility to shade or tailor it effectively for local relevance. Above all, Eurobranding respects the differences of European market characteristics, as well as the value of consistent branding across borders. When successful, the supporting role of the centre and the talents of local market specialists are woven together to optimum effect.
THE PRINCIPLES
Eurobranding begins with a recognition of pan-European needs and expectations at the consumer level. What values and needs do people of the same target audience share in every country? Once this value-based foundation is established, a brand concept which provides a common answer to all these needs can be developed.
A fundamental rule of Eurobranding is that of momentum. A partly harmonised brand - one with a consistent name or design - should never be regarded as an end in itself, or the culmination of brand development. It should be viewed as a step on the way to the eventual and total harmonisation of all brand elements - name, positioning, design and distribution, unless historical equity, trademarking or cultural inappropriateness prevent it. Even if the starting point is only 10% commonality - a common graphic signature in advertising, for example - it is already providing benefit to the company. As the first step towards commonality, it starts building a common culture within the company.
Various aspects of consistency represent stages of the journey towards true Eurobrands. In some cases, design is the common element. For example, Lever's fabric softener is sold across Europe under various names such as Soupline in France and Cocolino in Italy, with a consistent design system.
In other cases, the name and the design are consistent, but the positioning and brand communication differs. Evian, for example is sold throughout the world to different target audiences and with a different positioning between countries. In the US, Evian's marketing supports its positioning as a sporty, refreshing symbol of vitality; in the UK, one of health and purity; in France, as an everyday drink - even as an alternative to milk for children. So, while the audience and product communication differ, the design is consistent. Evian reaps big cost benefits from same product, design and brand name, even though it has a different positioning.
A third approach sees a product logo used as the consistent design element, even though the brand is marketed under different names from country to country. No cost savings are made in production, but consumer recognition is enhanced.
THE PROCESS
The transition through the Eurobranding process cannot be achieved overnight without losing valuable brand equity. It is better managed through a series of stages, with a gradual harmonisation of the look and positioning of a product running in parallel with a creation of a common team culture within the company. It is not necessarily a linear process, as different brands have different types of consistency and peculiarities which dictate the approach they need to take. However, a move towards a homogenous Eurobrand can be initiated from one of a number of scenarios, including totally fragmented brands, one of partial endorsement, or one where a common brand name or common visual identity is already shared.
SCENARIO 1: ENDORSEMENT
When different brand names and designs in different countries represent the same product, a common element must be introduced as a first step towards later unification. A common approach is to launch the journey towards Eurobranding through an endorsement system, using either a corporate or umbrella product brand.
Different values may be associated with the products, no cost rationalisation will be achieved, and the common endorsing element - usually a name or symbol linking the product brand between different countries - is of little real marketing or consumer benefit. However, the endorsement does serve two important purposes. The introduction of a common element is strong motivational signal within the company to begin drawing brand management together across Europe. Moreover, as a tool for harmonisation of long-term communications, it begins laying the groundwork for marketing synergies. Even if the endorsement element is irrelevant to the actual product - it could, for example, be a corporate brand symbol providing information on the parent corporation's values or sponsorship activities - it sets in motion a process which will gather momentum with time.
James River is one company using an umbrella product brand name - Lotus - to endorse a series of different products in different countries. Nestlé meanwhile, a company which traditionally preferred to use umbrella product brands such as Nescafe to endorse its products, has recently begun pushing its corporate brand name on individual products. This has the effect of further adding strength to Nestlé's corporate brand name and values, as well as enhancing its ability to move into new product categories with real credibility. L'Oreal is a company using both its product umbrella and corporate brands as endorsement; Douwe Egbert uses its corporate brand as an endorsement of some products like tobacco, while using it as the actual product brand in the case of its coffees.
In Danone's case, it uses a mixture of product and corporate brand endorsements to reinforce its values. For its flagship yoghurt product range, the 'Bio de Danone' mark is now a product umbrella brand, while in the case of Badoit mineral water, 'Badoit de Danone' is a more subtle reinforcement of its corporate values.
The introduction of Danone's corporate brand endorsement to its existing and newly acquired product brands has interesting side benefits. Through providing consumers with additional 'value' on pack through 'Danone-sponsored' nutritional advice, even telephone contact numbers for information, the company builds further awareness of its corporate brand, as well as giving it the credibility to expand into new product categories such as biscuits.
The other clear benefit to corporate endorsement is that of consumer faith in product quality. By lending its corporate name to a relatively unknown product, a company like Nestlé or Danone immediately imbues it with the values associated with other products and with the corporation itself. It also saves marketing resource; it costs far more to familiarise consumers with a new product than to associate that product with a corporate brand they already know. Endorsement gives a new or existing product a boost in profile and credibility that it would take years to achieve on its own.
SCENARIO 2: COMMON VISUAL IDENTITY
This situation arises when a product uses a common design system, but different names in different markets. It frequently occurs because in a certain market a local brand name is much stronger than the product name used in several other countries by the corporation, and it makes no sense to change. Another possibility is that the desired international brand name is not available in a particular country, or not culturally appropriate. However this does not preclude the brand introducing a common design system to its packaging across Europe, saving moderate amounts through common printing templates and marketing synergies. Although James River uses the Lotus umbrella product brand name on different countries (putting it into the 'Endorsement' category), it also uses similar design elements on some of its products in different markets. For example, the same packaging design is sold under the Lotus name in France and Belgium, while being sold as Tenderly in Italy.
Landor's work for Albal across Europe was a classic case of harmonisation of look under different brand names, with kitchen products such as Domopak and Glad given a consistent look in several countries while retaining the existing and well-known brand names. The global project to harmonise PepsiCo's Frito-Lay snack food brands is another example of this scenario, with the banner sun mnemonic device bringing an element of design consistency to all packs of Frito-Lay crisps in the US, Matutano Ruffles in Spain, Walkers in the UK and others. Once all these brands look the same, it will be far easier to begin endorsing them with an umbrella product or corporate brand name on the way to full harmonisation - and achieve the massive marketing savings implied by such a programme.
Great care must be taken in the creation of such a common visual link - whether it be a symbolic device or a complete pack design - as its success will depend heavily upon its appropriateness to different cultures and its ability to communicate the product benefits powerfully and consistently. Even if German and French consumers perceive yoghurt in a different way and eat it in different circumstances - and though Danone yoghurt's product values may vary from country to country - the company's corporate values of health and goodness are universal. Even if people in different markets don't share the same tastes, they can share the same values.
It is widely recognised that the most rapid way of building brand values in a multicultural market like Europe is to appeal to common emotions. The 'rational' approach of appealing to the intellect and explaining to consumers why they should buy a product is too time consuming and possibly unconvincing; addressing a brand proposition to the consumer's heart and subliminal desires or anxieties is far more effective. Once it has been created and proven through research, it is also a fast and effective route to the creation of a common internal culture, through the sharing of brand values between different territories. Liptonice is one such brand at this stage of development, based on a common emotion that can be shared by all Europeans.
SCENARIO 3: COMMON NAME
This scenario is usually an interim step in the inevitable progress towards a fully harmonised name and design system. In some cases, a product may have two positioning concepts in two different countries, in which case the design may be more difficult to harmonise. This scenario occurs sometimes as a result of acquisition, when a corporation applies an existing brand name to a new product, or as a natural step on the road towards a harmonised European brand.
Danone uses the Bio name and logo for its yoghurt brand all over Europe, but with pack designs differing between France, Germany and the UK. Kellogg's meanwhile uses its corporate brand liberally throughout its cereals product ranges, but individual product brands like Country Store, while sharing the same name between countries, use different designs. Global brands Fanta, Pepsi and Doritos meanwhile mix consistent brand names, logos and design elements such as the Pepsi Ball and the Doritos Triangle with packaging elements which vary from market to market.
There are real benefits within the company organisation to sharing a common name, not least of which is the local flexibility and sense of 'ownership' this gives to national brand managers. This may not outweigh the additional pack printing and marketing costs this approach entails, however in many cases this is the preferred strategy of companies. It may also result from one country simply refusing to introduce a design system developed elsewhere because it considers it inappropriate. At times it becomes a internal political issue.
SCENARIO 4: EUROBRANDING
It is easy to quantify the material savings on printing, packaging, distribution and marketing which true Eurobranding (using the same identity and the same name) can entail. Less obvious, but equally significant, are the deeper benefits which Eurobranding has on corporate culture and in clarifying corporate strategy. The benefits to morale, to motivation and communication of operating across Europe under one brand 'flag' cannot be overestimated.
Many brands have made the move over recent years towards a harmonised look and name across Europe, including Barilla, Bonduelle, Bols, Philips, Camay and Segafredo Zanetti. Increasingly, new products launched by international manufacturers are done so on the basis of sound pan-European research. Proctor & Gamble is one such example of exemplary design management, with the launch of brand like Pantene Pro-V shampoo similarly positioned across every European market.
The benefits of reducing the number of brand names and looks are enormous. Alongside the advantages of a harmonised communications message and the chance to achieve optimum distribution efficiencies lies the possibility of giving the brand extra ability to stretch. Focusing all marketing and promotional efforts on one consistent brand adds to its strength, which in turn gives it greater potential to stretch clearly into new categories. This in turn can greatly enhance the overall brand value.
A single brand also means a more focused brand research and development effort, with a unified and bigger budget. Moreover the results of this more powerful R&D can be used throughout the brand creation and implementation process. One design and printing centre can be used, reducing the number of separate research programmes needed to support the brand, streamlining the briefing, exploration and implementation processes and cutting costs on all aspects of the print process. If used intelligently, this also has a knock-on effect on production and distribution, increasing the brand manager's pan European buying power for raw materials and cutting investment and maintenance costs on production systems.
Eurobranding takes best advantage of the growing 'Europeanisation' of media. Joining the 'club' of Eurobrands has a value in itself: as the international stature of a brand grows, it has more power to influence events to its advantage and provides a sounder base for brand leverage. A Eurobrand is also seen differently by consumers, journalists and financiers as well as its distributors and suppliers; as a market leader (as opposed to a follower), it shapes the market, and negotiate deals to its own advantage.
A greater ability to expand into new product areas through a stronger brand is paralleled by a stronger platform to expand geographically. If a brand is highly recognised in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, consumers in Belgium will already know about that brand through overlapping media and promotions, even if the product is not yet available in that market. As borders become more open between the EC and Eastern European states, natural seepage of communications eastwards also helps build a strong launch platform to companies looking in that direction.
Eurobrands have access to big, high profile international events with their accompanying sponsorship or associative opportunities. Through focusing and clarifying its corporate brand name, Danone is now able to use big events and internationally recognised personalities to endorse its product ranges for the first time.
And it is not only European media channels which can be harnessed to better effect through Eurobranding - the Internet, as an important promotional channel of the future, is the ideal medium for big brands to communicate their values common to all countries as product marketing gets progressively more international. Both Danone, through its 'Institute' and Nestlé with its Website are already capitalising on this possibility.
The risks, though outweighed by the many positive points outlined above, are very real and need to be managed. The main cause of failure of Eurobranding programmes is internal company resistance to change, caused by a lack of understanding of the local benefits, and fuelled by fears of diminished roles and loss of jobs. Anticipation of such problems, effective communication and team building can counteract such negative possibilities, but great care must be taken.
THE 10 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL EUROBRANDING
1. Don't rush it! And be patient - planning and implementing an effective brand harmonisation programme needs adequate time for research and implementation in stages. It's a long term process which requires high investment up front, and focus on long term goals rather than short term expediency. The process is likely to take years, rather than months, but time is your co-operative partner - it builds your brand for you.
2. Build a team involving key decision makers in each country, and appoint a European coordinator. To prepare an effective strategy, representation from every country involved in the programme is essential, as are executives from both the strategic and implementation areas of a brand. Ideally, the European brand marketing director should travel to the various markets with a representative from the design agency, to see for himself the variations between product presentation and consumer buying customs. Tesco, Carrefour and Euromercato all have their own ways of doing things. Open minds lead to stronger solutions.
3. Before defining the project brief, explore opportunities for package rationalisation and simplification through graphics and structure. The inception of a Eurobranding programme is the best opportunity you may have to improve production line efficiencies, material reductions and supply chain rationalisation. A structural design and production analysis consultancy like Innovators can help assess the total possibilities here.
4. Include the consumer in the team. Use comprehensive research to understand the differences between the markets, look for commonalties, and build upon them. Research is invaluable in anticipating potential pitfalls such as unforeseen differences in distribution. How is the product going to be displayed on shelf? Are they to be sold in multi-packs? Different countries have different customs and buying patterns.
For these reasons, it is better not to select a lead country to research, develop and drive the project, as all the others may not conform to its ideal or its set of assumptions. One country may even unintentionally tend to be biased towards its own market issues, which may be irrelevant to others. Visual identity considerations should be incorporated in the mix right from the project's launch, along with the fundamental likes and dislikes of consumers to avoid starting on a flawed basis.
Above all, it's a team process. Before building a team with self-belief however, you have to build a shared conviction that the goal is worth pursuing; the whole team needs to be educated at the beginning of the project about its overall benefits at a pan-European, as well as a local, level.
5. Launch the project by developing a mosaic of common European values which is tested and 'bought into' by consumers in every market. This mosaic takes the form of a combination of words and concept or mood boards. By combining these approved values, you have a strong framework for the creation of a brand's core essence.
6. Define and test a range of brand missions or goals: what will the brand stand for, what it will deliver to consumers, and to what benefit? These brand missions can be tested in each European market, to find the one which will underpin the creative process. This gives you the knowledge, at the beginning of the process, of the values that the brand must embody, and the strengths and weaknesses of various other possibilities. Once the brand mission is clearly defined, it needs to be presented to the European brand team as a platform for common understanding of the issues facing the brand's development.
7. Once the team has been created, the research completed and the brand mission defined, you can enter the normal creative process, while continuing to pay special attention to details such as product formats and consumption patterns in various countries. This is very important psychologically and enables individuals at the local level to feel involved in the process. Even if packaged in the same way, some countries need their products presented, treated and even positioned differently. Success in Eurobranding is as much about people management as brand management.
8. Test the final results of the creative process in an exercise as close as possible to reality - on the shelf and in the store if possible - and with large a research group as possible. Qualitative testing gives you opinions, but quantitative testing gives you proof.
9. Be prepared to make a sacrifice in short term brand equity in favour of a long term brand benefit. This trade-off will be the most likely cause of internal opposition.
In parallel with internal resistance, be aware that there will also be supplier objections to your brand's harmonisation. None of your advertising agencies and printers working in different markets want to lose their business to a competitor; you, however, want one advertising campaign and one print application as your end product. Employ an agency with progressive views on cross-border synergies to help you manage the bridge to the future.
10. Once implemented, a Eurobranding process requires constant reviewing and consistent brand management. It must not be seen or communicated as a 'one-off' exercise. The end is really just the beginning.
Unknown. Might be from "Building Brands through Packaging Design," originally published in Financial Times (1998).
The structural element of packaging - often described as 'three dimensional' or 'physical' design - is an area of increasing FMCG investment. Use of structure as a brand differentiator is growing, along with a wider recognition amongst manufacturers and retailers of other benefits it can bring to the brand building process.
There are many market- and technology-driven reasons for this, and although the higher investment levels required for a change of pack structure continue to be prohibitive for many brand managers, in some sectors structural design has become the key element of brand strategy. Several product areas, notably spirits and pharmaceuticals, have traditionally depended on pack shapes and materials to deliver specific emotional and functional benefits. What has changed is today's emphasis on building a number of simultaneous benefits into the physical packaging of products, along with a greater awareness of the opportunities structural change can provide for supply chain rationalisation and, in some cases, improvement.
A Myriad of Benefits
At its most functional, physical packaging preserves the product on its journey between producer and consumer. Shapes are often determined by the need to protect parts of the product or, in the case of tamper-proof or anti-theft devices, to defend.
Yet structure is increasingly being designed with other protective qualities in mind. Much of today's physical packaging is specifically geared towards providing brands with shapes and textures distinctive enough to be copyrighted. The sheer investment required to emulate a competitor's packaging structure is another strong deterrent against copycatting and counterfeiting.
Beyond this, structural design's success is often judged in terms of its effectiveness of product delivery. Pouring spouts and medicine dispensers such as asthma devices are just two examples of the everyday consumer imperative faced by structural designers, while canned ale 'widgets' demonstrate the potential of structure and technology to interact with, and positively affect, the product at the point of consumption. In the store meanwhile, retailers derive benefits from packaging that is easily handled and transported, space efficient, and compatible with existing store inventory, pricing and tracking systems. Alongside such pragmatic considerations is the less tangible but equally consequential quality of structure to express brand personality, and foment a bond between the product and consumer.
With its myriad of considerations involving the production process, retailers' needs and consumer perceptions, the structural equation is complex. "The term 'structural design' in its general marketing industry usage is a misnomer - it refers only to physical design, not the total physical packaging concept," says Rob Holdaway, managing director of physical packaging consultancy Innovators. "Effective design is not just about a product's appearance on shelf. It may look great, but if you get it home to find it gives you problems when using it, then there's no brand equity at all and any residual visual equities are totally negated."
Shape, Texture and Product Personality
Possibly the best-known example of brand personality expressed through pack form is the Coca-Cola bottle, introduced in the US in 1916 and today arguably the world's most widely recognised pack shape. The company's appreciation of its value is evident in its use as a brand icon on cans and in promotions, and through Coca-Cola's actions in recent years to protect it through trademark registration. This hasn't prevented Virgin Cola from introducing its cheeky lookalike 'Pammy' bottle, supposedly modelled on TV star Pamela Anderson's contours, but with Coke's sinuous curves as the more likely source of marketing inspiration.
Coca-Cola spokesman Bob Bertini acknowledges the shape's importance to the brand: "Nothing communicates the personality of Coca-Cola like the bottle. It strikes an emotional chord with consumers world-wide. People of all ages like its grip and feel and appreciate its aesthetic value, so we've been emphasising the bottle shape as the main visual cue in advertising campaigns and on-can graphics since 1993." Coca-Cola's production of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottles in the unique shape are further evidence of its intention to use the icon in all forms of communication. The company also tested a prototype contoured steel can in Germany in 1994, and is testing aluminium contoured cans in several US markets. Says John Williams, divisional managing director of Rexam Food and Beverage Packaging: "Coke is the classic case of recognising the importance of shape, and shows the way forward. If you're very secure about your brand icon, you'll drive it through every form of packaging that you can."
Manufacturers and retailers are now acutely aware of structure's importance in projecting brand identity. Says Brian Whalan, managing director of car accessories manufacturer and retailer Halfords: "Every product is a small piece of you, and what it says must be consistent with your brand's core values. In our case, Halfords' values are honesty and straightforwardness about our products, and structure is as important as graphics in convincing the customer that a product will do its job well." William Brown at Brooke Bond puts it simply: "Through the packaging you are creating an icon. The structural and physical element is now part of brand equity."
Structure's role varies even within product categories. Perrier, Johnnie Walker and other drinks companies use bottle shape as a distinctive brand element, while in the canned drinks market graphics are generally the only difference. In another sector, Ferrero Chocolates' gold wrapping and clear container is an essential part of the brand experience, while a low-cost chocolate product's propylene flow wrap is designed purely to grab attention at the point of sale.
Packaging structure also delivers emotional benefits through familiarity and novelty. Jars for Marmite and Nestle's Gales Honey, Jiff's plastic lemon, and bottles used for Grolsch beer, SmithKline Beecham's Lucozade NRG drink and Dairy Crest's Frijj milkshakes are all examples of pack structures which appeal to the consumer without promising any functional advantage.
Designers probing the nature of the emotional connection between brand and consumer are acutely aware of the need for consistency between brand values and the visual and tactile elements of packaging. In the case of Colgate Palmolive's Soft and Gentle fabric treatment, the product's packaging process was modified by Wickens Tutt Southgate because it was felt to conflict with the brand's positioning. "You can't project softness and gentleness in a hard, cold, shiny metal can," says Paul Southgate. Through the use of textured inks and varnishes, and by modifying existing tooling, the product's aerosol container and plastic cap were given a matt finish softer to the touch. Southgate is convinced that the positive results were "due to the subliminal effect of the tactile communication reinforcing the visual, whereas previously they had been at war with each other".
Functional Benefits Through Structure
The functional benefits of some new pack forms have been so successful as to profoundly affect entire product categories. Trademarked product shapes like Johnson Wax Limited's Toilet Duck, Müller's range of yoghurt desserts and Halfords' motor oil can have all given their competitors cause to rethink their packaging strategies. In other areas, such as in the application of pump-action technology to toothpaste brands, or upside-down plastic sauce bottles, innovations have been rapidly adopted by competitors to become almost generic.
Toilet Duck, with its distinctive S-shaped neck to allow concentrated cleaner dosages under the toilet rim, is a defining piece of product packaging in its simultaneous delivery of functional benefits and brand distinction. Müller's yoghurt packaging is another example of structural innovation introducing a greater element of control into the product delivery, by allowing the consumer to mix the separated yoghurt and fruit. Says Rob Holdaway: "Competitors were blown away within a year by Müller, a new brand which no-one had even heard of. Many companies woke up to the threat and opportunity of structural packaging - in tandem with product differentiation - as a competitive tool through the Müller experience."
Structural innovation can also enhance ease of pack opening and dispensing, and improve the maintenance of product freshness. Packaging companies like Tetrapak and Rexam invest heavily to develop new markets with existing technologies, and examples of technology transfer abound. Covent Garden Soup Company's success in filling Tetrapak containers with fresh soups, and the growth of the fresh pasta sauces market at the expense of canning manufacturers, have led to a reassessment of the packaging 'rules' in those categories.
Several new consumer and retailer benefits can be delivered through the same structural design project. Danone's crushable plastic bottle for its Evian mineral water brand, launched across Europe in 1996, communicates convenience because of a crushed bottle's greater space efficiency. In countries with strict waste controls, it can even save the consumer money through reduced waste volumes. On another level, the design strengthens the Evian brand values through layered mountain shapes formed in the plastic. The bottle also adds novelty value to consumers of all ages who enjoy the 'crush factor'.
Adding benefits through structural packaging can be problematic and subjective, and breakthroughs which add value in the consumer's mind are outnumbered by cosmetic changes which are at best an irritant, at worst an active discouragement to buy. In the view of journalist Paul Gander (Marketing Week, June 28, 1996): "Making your bottle different is one thing, but making it so different that it falls over is quite another."
Structure and Brand Protection
Structural design is playing an increasingly significant role in the contentious area of brand mimicry. In 1994, with the introduction of the Trade Marks Act (TMA) in the UK, pack shapes could for the first time be registered as trademarks, while in early 1996, a means for owning Europe-wide intellectual property rights was created with the opening of the European Union Trademark Office.
The realisation that structural design can defend brands both through patenting legislation, and through the investment needed to copy a production line, has encouraged some manufacturers to use packaging specifically as a way of foiling competitors. Says Mark Beales, marketing manager at Nestlé: "The changes in the law mean that we think of packaging more as something to protect and value. Our Gold Blend coffee brand suffered from copy-cat design with supermarket designs close to it, so we have acted on that with the trademarking of our new Gold Blend jars. This involved a legal team and our Queen's Counsels working with our technical departments from the outset." Legislation against copy-catting in some countries has teeth; in the Netherlands, one of Van Den Bergh Foods' competitors was forced to remove its product from shelves after its structure was deemed too similar to the packs used for its Becel brand.
The definition of what is legally defensible is still being refined however, and Procter & Gamble had three separate applications for pack protection rejected within the first year of the Trade Marks Act, with the Patent Office ruling that each was devoid of distinctiveness. As one legal specialist cautions: "Manufacturers will continue to have a tough fight against the retailer copycats through structure, mainly because proving you've been copied is extremely difficult."
Even facing these difficulties, the success of several innovations has encouraged manufacturers and designers to seek a truly distinctive and defensible structural solution. Nestlé's relaunch of its Sun-Pat peanut-butter brand in stylised flip-top jars designed by PI Design International were cited by a Nestlé spokeswoman as the brand's "best available protection". Design Bridge Structure's work with McVitie's to package its Mini Jaffa Cakes in plastic pods was a big success; the investment levels required to copy such an innovation were a further discouragement to would-be competitors.
According to Planet's Kevin Vyse: "The trick is to design something that is difficult for an own-label to copy without looking stupid and cheap. Toilet Duck is so distinctive that everybody knows that if they attempted to rip it off, they would have big problems. They've approximated it with squared, directional bottles but nobody's done it with the S-shaped neck. They wouldn't dare."
Technology and Structure
Technological advance continues to exert a strong influence on structural design development. Recent innovations to make an impact include new techniques for bonding flexible materials and solids, methods of enclosing gases in pressure-sensitive plastics, and new decorative options for shrink sleeving, contact labelling and texturing. Other less visible breakthroughs have come through the creation of more exacting production systems, enabling cost savings through material and energy reductions. The lighter weighting of mass produced glass bottles, for example, has permitted a lowering of costs for both manufacture and distribution.
Drinks manufacturers have been quick to take advantage of advances made in plastics. The basic process for blow-moulding PET has been widely used for many years, but recent refinements have led to the production of well-shaped, finely contoured bottles with durability and strength. Five years ago a half-litre, fully shaped plastic Coca-Cola bottle without a stabilising base cup would have been unimaginable. Today, the technology has been extended to the canning process, with Seltzer just one company selling its drinks in clear cans.
The widening use of advanced computer modelling techniques is giving more designers the ability to create virtual forms on screen, and to experiment more extensively with structure. "Computer aided design (CAD) systems and 3D visualising has developed structural design in leaps and bounds," says Andy Mullens at United Distillers. "You can now communicate all design elements to the production teams without physical mock-ups; this used to take loads of time. Agencies which can do 3D modelling cost-effectively are going to win."
Designers are also taking advantage of techniques originally developed for architectural draughting and computer-aided manufacture (CAM) to test the viability of 3D concepts for material thickness and strength. "Using systems like Alias, you can evaluate a huge variety of structural design options in a reatively short time," says Rob Holdaway. "The quality of visual imagery means that you can refine your ideas significantly before committing to solid modelling, and still get a clear idea of what's possible without needing to prototype." Another benefit is that the data generated for visual experimentation by such programmes can also be used to produce tooling and solid models, shortening design development lead-times dramatically.
Other breakthroughs have occurred through new combinations of existing technologies. Procter & Gamble's use of spiral wound cardboard 'poster tube' technology for its Pringles potato crisp brand is one example. Both the tubing process and the technique of laminating package interiors to enhance their barrier properties had been in use in other sectors, however Pringles used both technologies to package food in a new way. In another case, McVities used existing technology to extend its Jaffa Cakes brand into a new market, employing dairy sector technology to create yoghurt pod-style packaging for Mini Jaffa Cakes, and making the brand relevant in a new way to parents with children's lunch boxes to pack.
Designers and brand managers maintain that the application of new technologies is primarily brought about by consumer need and the search for genuine product benefit. Nick Verebelyi says: "It's difficult to pinpoint technology as the driving force behind change. It's led by markets, competition and consumer behaviour, along with innovations by packaging suppliers into which we can tap."
From the packaging manufacturer's perspective, Rexam's John Williams concedes: "We as packaging companies have to get much better at the consumer aspects - what do they really want, what do they care about? Technology must enable us to make products fit for use, safe and functional, such as in friendly closure systems for senior citizens, child safety and tamper-proof benefits, and better maintenance of food freshness. Technology isn't an end in itself."
The Language of Structure
The consumer is becoming increasingly sophisticated at decoding the language of packaging cost, and today's buyers more easily recognise the connection between pack materials and product price. For example, within the ice cream category, cardboard carton, plastic and paper all denote grades of product quality, and the amount of 'value added' in the packaging process often depends on an ability to disguise a low cost material with high quality finish.
The success of individual brands also affects sector packaging trends. "If a brand is successful in a particular pack format, the rash of copycats which follow will tend to ape that structure and style," says Paul Southgate. "Anybody wanting to sell fresh, semi-chilled soup these days is likely to put it in a Tetrapak because Covent Garden Soup Company did. If they had succeeded with a different pack format, that would have become the standard."
Opportunities For Structure In New Areas
Markets characterised by packaging homogeneity provide big opportunities for differentiation. High turnover sectors where competitors use identical or similar formats (such as dairy and edible fats) and categories which are defined by the pack format (such as cigarettes and canned foods and some confectioneries) are likely to be those in which innovation will have a dramatic impact. Müller's influence in the yoghurt sector is a case in point, where structure has differentiated a brand in a previously unsegmented sector.
New containing and dispensing techniques to produce convenience foods and beverages provide further impetus for structural innovation. "There are big opportunities to invent entirely new products through a combination of understanding how packaging is manufactured, and how products are made," says Landor's Richard Ford. "There are products tailored for specific applications which haven't even been dreamed of yet, in which structural design is essential to making a change. Few products are specifically designed to be eaten while driving, for example - most are impossible to consume without making a mess, or put the driver in a dangerous position while driving." In Germany, says Lothar Böhm: "The market for convenience foods is growing rapidly, but convenience foods have been in boxes for the last 25 years and the consumer is eager for change."
The pharmaceuticals sector will continue to be an area of rapid evolution. As drugs and vitamins become increasingly a part of everyday health maintenance, and as more medicines move off the prescription list to be sold over the counter, health product manufacturers will come under growing scrutiny on matters of patient information and easy dispensing, as well as being pushed to develop more competitive brand identities.
On a more general level, optimisation of packaging construction and manufacturing techniques will provide further opportunities to improve product quality and shelf life. As the strength of packaging materials increases, the quantities of materials required for manufacture will also be reduced.
Structural packaging's technical complexity involves knowledge of non-static manufacturing processes. With new materials and techniques appearing all the time, few design agencies possess the holistic knowledge of current materials and techniques needed to competently advise their clients. Yet manufacturers and designers caution against structural change without adequate research and planning, as three dimensional structures are by nature more difficult to 'undo' than surface graphics. According to Kevin Vyse: "There are many examples of people cutting corners on structural development and launching new packaging without testing them adequately. It used to be much worse, but suppliers to M&S and other own-label chains always seem to provide bottles with leaky necks, or hinge closures that break after several openings. At Tesco we had hundreds of them which broke the first command of packaging: to contain and protect. If it leaks, it's doing neither." While retailers are becoming more rigorous about their own-label suppliers' testing procedures, industry specialists agree that most are still some distance behind brands in terms of structural packaging, and that brands will continue to stay ahead in terms of technical innovation, safety and general performance.
The Future: The Packaging Answers Back
It is generally believed that FMCG manufacturers will continue to invest more budget in structural design as possibilities for differentiation and consumer benefit increase, and as stronger copyright legislation makes structure a more tempting option for brand protection. Amaurey de Boisseau of James River Europe says: "We'll continue to test new packaging and new materials on consumers, and to push our printers and consultants to keep us at the front of our field. It could be to do with using the most environmentally safe packaging, it could be wrapping our paper products in as soft plastic or film as possible, or simply improving pack communication to achieve better product differentiation." Says Christine Lischka, senior art director Lother Böhm Design: "In the future you will see more exciting shapes which help the consumer make a decision at the shelf. With so many competitors, even the leader in each sector has to continually reinforce its leadership. Evian is a good example - water is water, but look what the brand has done for its personality through the new crushable bottle."
The European economic and social climate, and the need to comply with EC law, will exert a progressively stronger influence on materials chosen. Recyclable packaging forms and biodegradable materials such as cardboard, steel and glass will tend to be favoured over plastics. In parallel, new manufacturing techniques will add to the immense number of variables at the designer's disposal. "We'll never run out of options to affect the form, function, format and feel of packaging," believes Nick Verebelyi. "Through altering just one element of the mix, you can influence a product's personality, enhance its performance and practicality, and make it more environmentally friendly. The possibilities are endless."
Affordable technology will see future designers experiment with 'interactive' packaging. Microchips embedded within packaging can already provide solutions to stock control and theft prevention issues. The development of photochromatic and light sensitive films which react to different temperatures, techniques for imbuing materials with evocative scents which are activated by touch, and packaging with reactive sound effects are all likely directions of development in the quest for consumer attention.
"In the end," says Kevin Vyse, "what you really want is for the Toilet Duck pack to go 'Quack'."
Unknown. Might be from "Building Brands through Packaging Design," originally published in Financial Times (1998).
We invite you to review our perspectives on a wide range of strategic branding and design issues. In this new section, you'll find articles and commentaries, quotes, speech synopses, and white papers that reflect some of the basic philosophies behind Landor's branding process.
Walk through any supermarket, pharmacy or computer superstore and you'll notice an overwhelming abundance of ingredient brands.
An ingredient brand is exactly what the name implies: an ingredient or component of a product that has its own brand identity.
Well-known examples include PC computers with Intel Inside, diet soft drinks with NutraSweet, stereos with Dolby noise reduction, and Chevron gasoline with Techron.
Ingredient branding has become a prevalent marketing strategy in the 1990s, with clothing, computers, shampoo, breath mints, over-the-counter medicines, soft drinks, cookies, gasoline and credit cards all emphasizing branded ingredients.
Some big-name ingredient brands, such as Intel and Teflon in cookware, have become the point-of-entry to their categories. Other high profile ingredient brands, such as Gore-Tex in outerwear and ski apparel, are not category requirements but greatly influence consumer preference and choice.
Most marketers are either employing an ingredient branding strategy or thinking about doing so. But is ingredient branding the best strategy for every company?
CHOCOLATE CHIPS VS. MICRO CHIPS
Research International, New York, conducted a recent study to determine the benefits of ingredient branding. Consumers were shown a selection of popular chocolate chip cookie brands and asked if the addition of a premium brand of chocolate chips would enhance the perceived value and appeal of the cookies.
The results were mixed. The premium chocolate chips added value to the middle-of-the road brands, but they actually detracted from the value of the category leader, Pepperidge Farm.
The lesson? Consumers consider Pepperidge Farm as a premium brand and they expect that its cookies already contain the highest-quality ingredients. Instead of reinforcing consumers' positive perceptions, the heralding of a new, premium ingredient actually generated consumer skepticism.
A similar situation exists in the real world of personal computers. PC manufacturers recognize that the Intel Inside logo adds tremendous credibility and perceived value to their products. This is especially true for lesser-known brands, where the presence of the Intel Inside logo reassures consumers that they're getting a quality, trustworthy product.
However, some better-known PC manufacturers have expressed reservations about using the Intel Inside logo on their products. The same logo that legitimizes smaller computer brands could render category leaders like IBM or Compaq generic.
As noted marketing expert David Aaker of the University of California-Berkeley notes, to some consumers the Intel Inside logo might suggest that a particular PC brand is "just the same as everyone else." Aaker says that in many instances, "ingredient branding hurts the top-end players just as often as it helps the bottom-end players." Another danger of ingredient branding is that it can overshadow the host brand. As an IBM spokesman says in explaining the company's decision not to place the Intel Inside logo on some of its products, "There's one brand, and that's IBM."
IS THE INGREDIENT PART OF A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS, OR DISASTER?
Ingredient branding is a sensible approach when the ingredient enjoys more perceived value than its host product. In general, if the host product is new or has low awareness, if its technology is complicated, or if the ingredient brand can provide the product with a legitimate quality advantage over its competition, then the ingredient branding strategy can be highly effective.
Conversely, for a product that already enjoys a premium image and high customer expectations, it's best to avoid ingredient branding and focus on growing the product brand.
There remain, however, considerable advantages to employing an ingredient branding strategy. Ingredient branding can enhance the image, perceived quality and credibility of the host product, especially if the ingredient is well known by consumers.
Ingredient branding can provide immediate brand recognition and a "ready-made" audience for a new product, and it can boost differentiation by giving the host product a distinct characteristic that is difficult for competitors to imitate. And when an ingredient or component is the point-of-entry to your product category, ingredient branding becomes the only viable course of action.
Beyond the marketing benefits, ingredient branding can help companies achieve significant efficiencies because often the supplier and the manufacturer will share production, promotion, advertising and R&D costs. In addition, a well-known ingredient brand can make highly competitive distribution channels more accessible.
Despite its benefits, ingredient branding poses risks for certain products. For example, the ingredient brand's image could overshadow the product's brand identity or conflict with its core values. Unless consumers are convinced that the ingredient truly adds value or represents a genuine product innovation, they may not be willing to pay the additional price necessitated by the cost of licensing the ingredient.
And as illustrated by the Pepperidge Farm example cited earlier, consumers can become skeptical of the additional promise of an ingredient, especially if the product is already a category leader. Another concern is that it is increasingly difficult to obtain exclusive rights to an ingredient brand within your category, or to control which of your competitors can license the ingredient.
If licensing is not controlled, both the ingredient and your product are at risk of becoming generic. Licensing an ingredient brand can also be very expensive, especially if the ingredient is an established, successful brand in its own right.
Lastly, problems with the ingredient, such as a technical glitch, safety risk or health hazard could arise and cause significant damage to your product brand and corporate reputation.
DO'S & DON'TS
There are many issues to consider if you're contemplating an ingredient branding strategy. We recommend that you ask yourself the following questions:
Answering the above questions will help you decide whether ingredient branding is the right strategy for you, or if you should think twice before jumping on the ingredient branding bandwagon.
In a world full of clutter and contradictory messages, effective identity and brand can be the reasons a consumer chooses one product over another. This quarter, the Journal explores what goes into creating and nurturing powerful identities and brands. Contributors distill the fundamentals, as well as address packaging, dual branding, brand extensions, and branding in digital environments. There is also an array of hands-on lessonscase studies on Lucent Technologies, Caterpillar, 3M, Imation, Haworth, Nantucket Nectars, and the country of Ireland, all of which translate identity and brand strategies into workable design management decisions.
The Lucent Technologies identity was established with impressive speed, generating equally impressive outcomes. Patrice Kavanaugh details the process behind the identity program, from consultant selection to the rollout of signage and advertising. Looking back on the intensive effort, she distills six pivotal lessons that she believes make important contributions to thoughtful, yet efficient, identity design and implementation.
The identity for Lucent Technologies was created despite and because of three paradoxes. The first is suggested by the title of this article. Once this "start-up" company was formed it instantly became a Fortune 40 company with a lineage tracing back 125 years. Nevertheless, despite its heritage, size, and international scope, nobody had heard of this new company because it was, after all, a start-up venture.
The second paradox is that in order to effectively shape and articulate the new company's future, its identity needed to leverage, from its own history, powerful brand equities and assets, such as Bell Labs.
The third paradox is that the announcement of the new identity, normally a high-profile media event for large corporations, was staged under very strict Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations because of the company's impending initial public offering of stock. The SEC prohibits any overt marketing or promotion prior to an IPO, and even interviews with the press are strictly limited.
Taken together, these paradoxes contributed to a very challenging assignment for both Landor Associates and Lucent Technologies. Even more imposing was the deadline for completion of the new identity12 weeks from the project kick-off meeting to official management approval. This radically compressed timeframe represents a fraction of the time typically required for such programs.
Getting Started
Before I explain how the identity program began, here's a brief history that will help put this program in a meaningful historical context. Near the beginning of the 20th century, AT&T was buying up local phone companies. The company enlisted legions of operators to staff switchboards. Its telephone lines snaked through towns across the North American continent, connecting homes, schools, businesses, and government agencies. Eventually the so-called Bell System emerged, as did its sanctioned monopoly. For decades, big was better and growing ever bigger. The bubble burst in the early 1980s. Confronted by a relentless and enervating anti-trust suit that ushered in an era of institutional lethargy, AT&T agreed to break up its Bell System monopoly.
In 1984, AT&T spun off the seven "Baby Bells," creating a corporate identity crisis for all concerned. New names and symbols spilled onto the covers of annual reports, appeared on TV, and arrived on monthly telephone bills.
AT&T, denied use of the Bell name and logo by the terms of the anti-trust ruling, was left with a name hitherto barely known outside of Wall Street circles. Nevertheless, the company went on to make AT&T a powerful brand for long-distance and telecommunications products. All that began to change in September 1995, when AT&T decided to reinvent itself again through a "trivestiture" that would split the company into three separate, publicly held entities (figure 1).
When AT&T decided to split itself into three standalone companies overnight, it created a $21 billion systems and technology company without an identity or a name.
The three companies left in the wake of that restructuring were: AT&T, which by 1995 was best known as a $50 billion telecommunications services concern; NCR, a computer firm, which planned to revert to its old name; and a nameless $20 billion company that built, designed, and delivered a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems, and microelectronics components.
The decision stunned the more than 300,000 AT&T employees throughout the world. The news also astonished Wall Street. On September 20, 1995, AT&T was the hottest topic on its own network.
For weeks and months after the announcement, employees of the unnamed company remained uncertain even about how to answer their phones. "Do I still say 'AT&T'? Or do I say 'Systems & Technology Company'? What should I do with my business cards?" There was genuine excitement. And there was palpable uncertainty and apprehension. All this internal turmoil helped focus attention on the need to create a new identity quickly.
Reason for Being
The mission was to launch this new company so as to make it distinct from its AT&T progenitor; it needed to have its own unique identity and reason for being. The new company awaited a single, powerful, and compelling idea that would clearly define what it was, what it did, and where it was going. The timing was urgent, driven by the deadline to issue by the end of the first quarter of 1996 what was to become the largest IPO in history.
The new company quickly established a 10-person cross-unit senior team to begin the identity process. This team interviewed three top identity firms and ultimately selected Landor Associates for its ability to meet the highly accelerated timeframe, its relevant experience, its creative approach, and its immediately available and project-dedicated team. With no time to spare, the kick-off meeting took place two days after the decision was made to work with Landor. From that first meeting in mid-October to the early January approval by senior management, the project was accomplished during a frenzied and frenetic 12-week period (including the holidays!).
Thinking It Through
Before any names or designs could be generated, the new venture's leaders had to agree about which attributes the new identity should communicate. Interviews with senior management, employees, and customers and dealers around the world provided insights into the positive characteristics that the new company should retain from its antecedents, the negative perceptions it wanted to shed, and finally, the singular qualities it should stress in order to forge a new image for itself. The company wanted to retain characteristics of reliability, technology, and stature while adding the dimensions of speed, energy, flexibility, and customer focus.
A review of competitive identities, particularly in the telecom industry, revealed a great opportunity to create a very distinctive identity for the new company. Most of the competitors possessed identities in shades of blue or gray, with uppercase letters, and little or no symbology. Therefore, by using upper- and lowercase letterforms, symbology, and color, a new identity would easily stand out from the crowd.
From a naming standpoint, the analytical phase of the project also exposed an opportunity for differentiation. In the United States alone, there are tens of thousands of existing names that use common word segments such as net, sys, tech, tel, and com. These are, as one might expect, especially plentiful in the telecommunications and technology industries (figure 2). A new name that intentionally and confidently eschewed the customary net-sys-tech-tel-com construction would distinguish the new company further.
| Word Segment | All Classes | Telecom | High Tech |
| "NET" | 11,665 | 1,628 | 1,890 |
| "SYS" | 12,742 | 172 | 2,436 |
| "TECH" | 10,237 | 143 | 1,738 |
| "TEL" | 7,909 | 870 | 1,227 |
Given the volume of names containing net, sys, tech, and tel, the new company avoided these word segments in order to differentiate its new name.
Creating the Foundation
Armed with the information gathered from the internal interviews, the external research, and the visual and naming audit, the Landor team began creative development. Naming specialists and designers worked concurrently to generate ideas. These ideas revolved around four broad themes. Two of these themessystem and connectionspoke to the nature of the new company's industry. The other two themescreativity, and light as a metaphor for visionary thinking reflected the company's operating and guiding business philosophy.
Culled from more than 700 candidates, the Lucent Technologies name was a direct result of the exploration of this last theme. The dictionary defines lucent as "glowing with light" and "marked by clarity." Together with the qualities and imagery it evoked, Lucent expressed the energy, innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and clear vision of the company's purpose, principles, and future. Of equal importance to Lucent's management team, its new name was a bold departure from the nomenclature prevalent throughout its industry and from AT&T. Finally, to ensure that the Lucent name could transcend international borders, it was screened for any cultural or linguistic problems and weaknesses in 13 languages (English, French, German, Danish, Arabic, Cantonese, Thai, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Mandarin, and Hindi).
The use of the descriptive line Bell Labs Innovations serves to remind Lucent's customers, employees, investors, consumers, and competitors that Bell Labs is the engine that drives the company's many innovations. Because of its name recognition and international renown for research and development, Bell Labs imbues Lucent with immediate credibility. Bell Labs Innovations is, however, a secondary message that supports the new name and symbol as the primary exponents of the company's desired image.
Hundreds of identity designs were generated and reviewed over the course of the project. Some strongly referenced the company's heritage; others less so. New concepts incorporated graphic elements that conveyed the creative themes mentioned earlier. Some of these concepts looked as if they were drawn by handa quality the new company gravitated toward. Ultimately, the final design selected was based on a simple, yet powerful, circle icon rendered with a single, bold brush stroke (figure 3).
Lucent is a real word meaning "glowing with light" and "marked by clarity." It conveys the company's energetic spirit and clear vision of its future.
Because in many cultures circles historically have depicted universality, knowledge, and perfection, the Lucent symbol came to be known as "The Innovation Ring." The loosely drawn, dynamic red circle represents a continuous cycle of discovery, creativity, and learning. Of equal significance, the circle's striking red color diverges from the industry category's ubiquitous blue and gray color cues. The hand-drawn simplicity evinces and reinforces the personal, emotional appeal of human communication enabled by technology.
Taken together, the identity's atypical elementsname, color, and symbol deliver an unambiguously different, fresh, and more personal message than the precise, harder-edged identities endemic to corporations within and outside the telecommunications and technology arena.
Launching and Rollout
Once the creative foundation for the new identity was approved, the new company was ready for its launch. But on February 5official launch daythe company had simultaneously filed an SEC registration for the initial public offering of stock. That action plunged Lucent into a 60-day blackout period. Strict SEC guidelines prohibited most publicity and all corporate advertising. While the company was able to introduce the new name and symbol to employees, it could not support and explain its new identity with any external communications. At the same time, for reasons of communications, it would be imperative to swing into full implementation the moment the blackout period lifted. The design extension included stationery, promotional brochures, presentation and slide templates, products, vehicles, and signs.
Although employee acceptance of the new identity would eventually occur, during this period many employees had difficulty embracing the new identity, for various reasons. For one, thousands of Lucent employees had been with AT&T for many years. For longtime AT&T employees to suddenly embrace a new company caused emotional turbulence and uncertainty. In addition, the bold new identity was vastly different from the AT&T identity in its look and usage. On many levels, employees needed time to rally around Lucent and its new look.
Lucent made the best of the blackout period by spending the time developing a set of basic guidelines and a "look and feel" for all of the communications that would carry the new identity. These were helpful for promoting acceptance by employees, as well as for facilitating the rollout. Within two weeks of the launch, the company internally distributed the basic guidelines that explained the Do's and Don'ts of the new identity (figure 4). These guidelines helped reduce the deluge of telephone calls that the recently formed implementation task force initially received an average of 1,200 calls a day during the two weeks following the launch. During the ensuing months, two more installments to the guidelines series were distributed, each including more detail with regard to specific applications. To make a long story short: The challenge was to simultaneously design and implement the complete system.
Early distribution of Lucent's basic guidelines helped stem the flood of implementation-related requests from employees eager to begin using the new identity.
Designing a Personality
The result of the design extension was a look and feel for the company's communications pieces that hinged on the concepts of open and approachable. The use of clean white backgrounds and large-serif type reinforced these ideas (figure 5). In addition, illustration was employed as a cornerstone of the new system, not only because of its distinctiveness in the category, but also for its ability to convey conceptual ideas that Lucent Technologies was in the business of selling solutions, not just products.
The print materials feature illustrations, bold typography, and lots of white spaceall of which contribute to a more approachable, friendly, customer-focused look and feel. Building, office, and facility signing was equally crucial to rolling out the new identity. Landor calculated that Lucent, with 1,100 sites worldwide, could generate more than 1.4 billion impressions per year through its signs alone. The solution for the signing system lay in a flexible, modular system. The use of translucent glass as a primary material reinforces the notion of light communicated by the company's name. And the exposed framework, visible through the glass, subtly conveys the idea of clarity, another key attribute of the name (figure 6).
Lucent's 1,100 sites worldwide generate more than 1.4 billion impressions a year through signage. In keeping with the image conveyed by the new name, the new sign system features glass as a primary material.
Lucent also developed an advertising campaign, so that once the blackout period was over, the company could begin establishing its new identity in the marketplace. Because Lucent would be building an image from scratch, the company felt it was important to establish a memorable personality along with a clear message: a personality that would help the company connect with people's emotions as well as their intellects (figure 7). The original idea for the human voice that is the cornerstone of the Lucent advertising campaign was born during the ad agency's first visit to Bell Labs. The advertising creative team was pleasantly surprised by the researchers they met, who instead of spouting confusing, esoteric techno-jargon, spoke plainly and eloquently about big ideas and sophisticated concepts.
Lucent hoped that giving a human quality to a huge corporationthrough the use of the human voice in its broadcast and print advertisingwould help overcome the biggest communications obstaclethe cluttered 1990s marketplace.
That impression led to the creative approach. Lucent hoped that giving a human quality to a huge corporation also might help it overcome the biggest communications obstacle of all the cluttered 1990s marketplace.
Letting the Light Shine
Lucent Technologies got its first chance to shine on April 4, 1996, the first day the stock was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street literally saw the light.
About 74 minutes after the opening bell, the first bundled transaction of nearly 16 million Lucent shares traded at 317/8, almost five points above the opening price set the night before by the underwriters.
The initial public offer for about 17 percent of the company was an instant success and the largest IPO in US history. It was a great day, with employees in attendance from across the company. Finally, six days later on April 10, the SEC reduced external communications restrictions and Lucent was allowed to begin telling its story to the outside world. There are several lessons to be learned from the Lucent Technologies identity story that can be applied to most identity programs. · Set a schedule at the very start of the project, including key decision milestones. Decision milestoneswhich in Lucent's case included almost weekly work sessions with the cross-unit team throughout the critical first phases of the projecthelp ensure that the project stays on track.
(Reprint #9674KAV20)
This article was first published in Design Management Journal 8:1 (winter 1997).
To see an example of a vanishing species, take a look at the symbol for National Westminster Bank.
Whatever the story is behind this group of three clustered triangles, it’s pretty impenetrable to the customer. As a veiled allusion to a fortress or castle, it may convey something about corporate strength and security, but doesn’t tell you much about the human dimension of NatWest’s business. Nor does it express the bank’s commitment to personal service, organisation, efficient management or even fiscal responsibility.
One might similarly argue that Shell’s logo lacks adequacy on a symbolic level, in its inability to reflect the nature of the organisation Shell aspires to be. The symbol has served its owner well - it’s highly recognised, has accumulated value and emotional attachment, and is accepted as appropriate for a major corporation. It’s therefore surprising that over a period of years Shell has tinkered with its symbol, with the tendency to abstract it more and more. It’s as though Shell feels the need for its image to become crisper and more geometric. Though remaining essentially recognisable, the pecten’s evolution has been achieved at a cost to its greater emotional dimension.
Thankfully these identity marks are atypical of the current trend in corporate visual expression. The fundamental way in which companies view and use their identities is changing. Those searching for better commercial performance or seeking to assert their core strengths are using corporate identity to communicate a balanced range of emotional content about their nature and role, both in society and within the industries in which they stand. The corporate identity itself is becoming less precious and fixed, and more part of a flexible kit of elements which can be shaded as necessary for different customers, geographical sectors or product ranges. We are now in a different era where effective expression is key.
Corporate identity has become simply one part of the complex communication process between a product or service provider, and the consumer. Historically, identity was seen as a permanent fixture synonymous with the industrial category that a company operated within. Just as Mercedes-Benz’s name is synonymous with high quality automobiles, its star symbol successfully reinforces the idea of a company focused on precision and quality. While these are interesting and attractive attributes, Mercedes’ visual identity fails to suggest other valuable dimensions like service, style, or caring. Mercedes must therefore live, sometimes uncomfortably, within the narrow focus of its corporate image. Were it to begin manufacturing furniture, it would obviously have to convey a very different set of messages; even operating within its traditional industry sector, the company has found the need to develop secondary image modifiers to fill its perception gap, using additional graphic elements in advertising, brochures and other media to achieve this purpose, just as NatWest and Shell do.
The current trend away from rigid and limiting corporate identities like these is driven by two factors: fashion and consumer sophistication. While fashion has had a more immediate and visible influence on the evolution of corporate identity, it is consumers’ heightened awareness of symbolic meaning that has had a more fundamental impact on corporate voice.
There is very little that is truly free from fashion’s influence. We have all learned to decode messages transmitted through combinations of colours, typography and other visual cues to interpret different designs as typical of their time. Most anyone can identify examples from the 1930s, 1950s, or 1970s. Transient factors such as fashion trends don’t negate core perceptions, however. Corporate identities which we commonly regard as more permanent, such as Mercedes’ and Volkswagen’s, have longer life spans because their ‘personalities’ are focused on fewer and more definitive aspirations.
On a deeper and more significant level, today’s audiences are far more sensitive to the temperature and content of messages conveyed by corporate identities. The heavily consumer-focused advertising and public relations that NatWest, Shell and Mercedes employ, demonstrate the inadequacy of their primary visual vocabulary.
How are companies responding to this changing environment? British Telecom’s symbol, created by Wolff Olins in the early ‘90s, was a milestone in the development of the new philosophy of corporate identity. It stands out because when launched, it was so controversial, and unusual for its time. In retrospect, we see its uniqueness even more vividly because of the environmental context from which it emerged. For at least a decade prior to its appearance, virtually all major identities being introduced were abstract, geometric and hard-edged. This process of reductivism or graphic distillation was about producing highly rationalised graphic systems, thought to be more sophisticated simply by virtue of their symbolic representations. An additional advantage was that they were convenient, audit structured, and well suited to consistency in reproduction.
The extreme intellectual rationalisation necessary for the creation of these abstract, yet ultimately anaemic solutions came with a developing sense of unease, however. It became obvious that the result of this thinking was the creation of sterile, frozen symbols lacking any responsiveness to emotional needs.
Against this scenario, it’s clear that the message conveyed by BT’s identity was not focused on the organisation’s technological sophistication, but on its human dimensions. BT’s piper is a living message carrier or communicator with a very real human purpose. The symbol has a hint of heraldry which gives it nobility and a sense of history. The positive influence generated by its creation and launch was widely felt. In the years that followed we saw, in many industry sectors, movement towards greater lyrical expression and flexibility, enhancing the ability of identity to convey specific messages. The rationale became less about formalism or functional convenience, and more about captivating audiences which had until then remained untouched by traditional monolithic identities.
Whether or not today’s more expressive symbolism constitutes a new era, reality and relevance have undoubtedly become crucial to corporate identity. If one focuses on a selection of identities from the recent past, they can be divided into two distinct camps: one focusing on symbols or abstracted, coded messages, the other incorporating more obvious, pictorial imagery, whether executed literally, as illustration, or by photographic means.
When designers operate between these poles - combining the functionalism of abstracted form with pictorial imagery’s evocative power - the results can be quite dramatic. The renewal of Swedish co-operative KF’s visual identity last year by Landor is a good example. The core exercise involved a loosening and rephrasing of KF’s well-established infinity symbol. While the mark remains a relatively cool, geometric device referring to the organisation’s historical origins, new layers of meaning were infused by reinterpreting the symbol’s construction, and by adding a secondary graphic level which is pictorial in nature and specific in its references. It’s no accident that an imaginary Scandinavian archipelago was chosen to augment the core meaning of the identity device. Imagery of nature carries strong and fundamentally positive social connotations for Swedes. As KF the co-operative retailer is also integral to everyday Swedish life (a third of the population are members), when its identity is depicted as part of the Swedish landscape, an understandable parallel is being made. In other cases, designers have gone further in abandoning purely geometric devices. Identities created by Michael Peters for the Conservatives, Fitch for the Liberal Democrats, Newell & Sorrell for Pharmacia-Upjohn, Wolff Olins for Prudential, and by Landor for Vedior, Montell and Cathay Pacific are essentially symbolic expressions, but executed in a more emotional and immediate way to convey spirit and feeling, tell stories and give evidence of human interaction.
Much has been made of the power of corporate identity to communicate the values and philosophy of a company. What’s new, however, is the heightened awareness of an identity’s tone of voice. It’s no longer sufficient to broadcast substantially correct messages at the public - they now need to be focused in a convincing manner. This requirement comes from new and dynamic forms of presentation like television and video, where images can appear rotating, exploding, or as highly coloured animated forms, in contrast to what were formerly static renderings in print. This environment has left many existing corporate identities looking pretty flat, and has led design consultancies to search for appropriate imagery which coherently expresses their ideas’ emotional dimension. The most effective corporate identities engage you, allow you to respond to the style of their presentation, and encourage you to recognise yourself within them.
Set against this current trend of corporate identity practice, it’s worth remembering that ideas, concepts and visual expressions are generally fluid. Of course, there are the immutable design classics, the quintessential expressions of a particular idea or concept which may be ridiculed at one time and hated another, but which steadfastly endure changes in public attitude and social climate. Few symbols or visual icons have as much power today as they did at their inception, although some - the Crucifix and the Star of David for example, both abstract and geometric in design - retain the highly charged emotional significance they did thousands of years ago. Yet even these symbols live in tandem with a plethora of humanistic iconography which complements the abstract philosophical content: the Crucifix is balanced by representations of the Virgin Mary and fish, while the Star is supported by a host of ritual symbols which modify, reinforce and bring to human terms a complex theological thought.
What we are seeing today isn’t so much a revolutionary design movement attempting to give human face to abstract ideas, but a return of the pendulum to a more rational coexistence of a family of images, which reinforce an idea or concept. Less a ground breaking development, in fact, than the completion of a cycle.
Generally, what happened thousands of years ago and how it is symbolised has little relevance to how we live today. All design is language of the day and ultimately transient. This doesn’t mean that searching for new ways of expression is valueless. Rather, it implies that those communicating though design must constantly be aware of evolving social trends, and avoid clinging to thoughts or symbols which have outlived their usefulness.
The search is not only our birthright, it’s an imperative that we re-invent ourselves daily. In our quest to discover ever new ways to communicate identity, however, we must remember not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
This article was first published in Creative Review (1997).
Just how to get all elements in the communications mix working in harmony has become the corporate Holy Grail of the 1990s. Integrating every piece of communication - be it the chairman’s speech, a piece of advertising or visual communication through corporate and product design - sounds blindingly obvious. So, why do so many companies stumble along the way?
Interest in integration has grown recently as a direct result of budgetary pressures. And rightly so - most companies would prefer one or two agencies to provide counsel instead of four or five. Most want a single strategy that works through the line. Few would therefore argue with the need for integrated communications - that would be like saying ‘I don't believe in results’. Yet many misunderstand not only how to achieve it but also the nature of true ‘integration’. The word in itself can lead some people astray. Integration is a process to deliver an end result, not an end in itself. Yet all too often, people talk of integration in terms of having to modify all communication accordingly. This is not always necessary. Many companies already do it naturally - these organisations share a clarity of vision concerning what they are, and what it is they want to achieve.
Focus On The Goal
It’s a question of focus. Take BMW and Marks & Spencer - they don’t need to integrate anything formally, as the essence of their company permeates everything they do. However, for others with a weaker sense of purpose - such as businesses which have grown rapidly, or have recently undergone a merger - corporate vision can become clouded. At worst, different departments within a single organisation can develop their own game plans and communications strategies.
Uniting these disparate parts into a single strategy has tangible benefits. Lack of integration comes at a cost - through inefficiency and duplication, and more importantly, through employee and customer confusion about just what a company and its products and services stand for.
The situation has been exacerbated by a fragmenting media marketplace. New media opportunities to target customers have led some to develop a portfolio of messages for different niche audiences. There is, however, a risk in saying too much as there’s no guarantee any communication will be received in isolation. A company can’t convince one group that it is ethical while simultaneously convincing another, for example shareholders, that it is run purely for profit.
Communicate From Inside And Out
By the same measure, it’s no use presenting one message to staff and a contradictory one to consumers. Many forget that corporate communication occurs as soon as an employee opens his or her mouth. You are more likely to have a motivated work force if they know what the company stands for, and buy into it.
An integrated communications strategy is especially relevant for larger, trans-national businesses. With the move towards devolution of management and responsibility in international and global corporations, it is essential to unite a work force split across different sites in different countries and convey a clear message to consumers and the international investment community.
People may think this kind of restructuring makes it harder to achieve, but it is possible if decided centrally and implemented holistically from within. Take the example of British Airways, whose latest re-design coincides with a new strategy to position itself as both truly international in image, yet locally focused in terms of service and product relevance. It is a message sung simultaneously by the new identity, advertising, promotion and product portfolio.
Consistency is therefore critical. All too often companies are swayed unnecessarily by the competition. Too many organisations want to keep changing their core message to keep up with the Joneses, which ultimately can confuse consumers.
Start With The Brand
The first step, to buy into the concept of an integrated communications strategy, is therefore relatively easy. If the brand is the anchor, all communication must reflect this, both in terms of positioning and core values. Few, however, follow this through as implementing an integrated approach is an altogether different challenge. And there are a number of reasons why.
Thinking in boxes can be a major pitfall. Take attitudes to different elements of the communications mix. Many businesses regard advertising as only a distant cousin of brand design and corporate identity - each is regarded as important, yet different parts of the equation. So, a client eager to re-position a tired old brand frequently approaches an advertising agency for a new campaign. But in fact the problem is more complex - the packaging looks 30 years out of date. It’s no good the client then saying ‘Let's do the advertising then look at the design’ - as many have done to their own regret.
There is, however, a fine line to tread. Instigating a redesign without reviewing the rest of your communications strategy can also have a negative effect. Take Midland Bank whose parent, HSBC, recently began re-branding local Midland branches, dropping the familiar gold-on-blue griffin with the cold corporate red and white triangle of HSBC.
The British bank literally changed its colours while the rest of its communications have so far failed to bring this to life by conveying either the nature of the ‘new’ organisations, its values or emotions. Examples of well-orchestrated campaigns delivering true integration of brand, advertising, promotion and PR include recent work for Pepsi, Perrier and Haagen Dazs ice cream. In each case, the brand equals the communication equals the message.
Collaborate On The Creative Concept
A preoccupation with ownership of the creative idea is another potential pitfall. Design has a strategic role to play in enabling an organisation - and its marketing service providers - to define and articulate corporate vision. However, with an integrated strategy, no one agency has sole claim to the creative concept. This applies as much to advertising as it does to defining the brand.
The ideal approach involves a group of specialists developing a closely integrated strategy for which the creative lead could come from anywhere. It doesn’t really matter who comes up with the idea, just that it is the best one for the brand. Of course, managing this process is another challenge. Control and responsibility is a key issue. The aim should be a shared project team and a shared project; many clients don’t get anywhere near that.
One reason for this is client structure. The more people involved, the harder it is to achieve. Reducing the links in the chain of command responsible for devising the communications strategy is one answer; investing in internal communications and education is another. It may take a whole organisation to change before structures and attitudes enable proper implementation of an integrated strategy. An example of an effective integrated communications strategy is the recent re-launch of the RAC, complete with new logo, new positioning, new advertising and a new portfolio of products and services. RAC director of strategy Jan Smith cherry-picked ‘experts’ in different marketing and communications fields to create a dedicated, single client ‘virtual agency’. Her 360 degree approach was designed to work at every level within the RAC’s internal and external communication.
Top Leaders Support Top Strategies
The effectiveness of such an integrated strategy relies on support from a company’s top decision-makers. Within organisations where integration occurs naturally, the vision filters downwards through all levels. Where an organisation is moving towards integration, both champion and enforcer are required to ensure theory is put into practice. No one person can ‘own’ the vision - it must become omnipresent in the company consciousness. It’s not about task forces, and nor should responsibility rest solely in the marketing department. Marketing directors by training are focused more on the customer than the staff; both, however, are just part of the equation.
It takes commitment and determination. Long-term partnerships can help, although if the vision is right, integration is achievable even with working relationships struck just for a few weeks. There is, however, a fine line to tread. Over-integrate the communications strategy, and flexibility can be reduced. Shareholders and customers do have different communications needs which should be separately addressed. The point is, they can be complementary.
Successful integrated communications work from the centre outwards - which presents no conflict with devolving management responsibility. All any communication does and should do is reflect everything that is unique about an organisation. Ultimately, it’s common sense.
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We invite you to review our perspectives on a wide range of strategic branding and design issues. In this section, you'll find articles and commentaries, quotes, speech synopses, and white papers that reflect some of the basic philosophies behind Landor's branding process.
New York, April 17, 2001 - Landor Associates, the world's preeminent branding consultancy, has developed a new branding system and identity for the Wildlife Conservation Society. The new identity was introduced at the annual meeting of the Society held at New York's Lincoln Center on April 16. Key to the event was the announcement that Wildlife Conservation Society will now go by its full name, no longer publicly using the acronym "WCS." This represents a clear focus by the Society to increase its brand awareness and more fully communicate its mission.
The new Wildlife Conservation Society brand is based on the image of light dappling through a forest canopy or coral reef, providing a natural context for the Society's name. The execution of the identity is also reminiscent of a "flag" or "banner" underscoring Wildlife Conservation Society's activist approach to preserving endangered ecosystems worldwide.
With the new brand, all of the Wildlife Conservation Society parks--The Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Wildlife Center, Prospect Park Wildlife Center and Queens Wildlife Center--will be linked graphically to the core identity. This will provide a direct connection between the educational and scientific programs of the Society, extending recognition for the organizational brand across all of its many activities.
The Landor developed Brand Driver™, "On All Fronts," conveys Wildlife Conservation Society's work as "wildlife champion" on the front lines of the conservation movement in the field. They remain the only worldwide organization that is involved in the three key areas of internal conservation, education and living institutions. "On All Fronts" also served as inspiration for Young & Rubicam Advertising in development of a new campaign for the Society to be rolled out later this year. The advertising will be aimed specifically at building awareness around the new brand. Y&R's previous work for Wildlife Conservation Society has been widely praised.
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management -- using design, research, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding -- to help companies build brand power and communicate with their audiences more effectively. Landor has a global network of offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Hilton, Microsoft, BP, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Procter & Gamble, Netscape, Brasil Telecom and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, the world's largest marketing services group.
For more information, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or go to www.landor.com.
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New York, April 2, 2001 - Landor Associates, the world's preeminent branding consultancy, has developed a new brand signature for Morgan Stanley, a crisp, modern treatment of the venerable Wall Street name. The launch of the new signature was April 2.
As part of an ongoing global branding initiative, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter changed its name to Morgan Stanley and retained Landor to develop a more contemporary and distinctive projection of their brand.  The name change and new identity signals the firms' complete integration while also positioning it as a merged entity, allowing Morgan Stanley to identify itself as the fast moving, progressive company it is. The corporate signature is one element of what will be an entirely new "look and feel" for the organization.
"Our logo is the visual anchor of a contemporary and dynamic identity," said Phil Raskin, Chief Marketing Officer for Morgan Stanley. "The brand name Morgan Stanley is clear and memorable--as a global brand should be--and brings the benefit of global recognition as a preeminent, trusted financial services firm."
The graphic element of the signature, appearing above the Morgan name, is a "directional triangle." It points toward the northeast, the general direction of financial success as well as being a After a change of name, the venerable Wall Street firm turned to Landor for a "distinctive projection" of their brand
Read Morgan Stanley's press release
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management -- using design, research, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding -- to help companies build brand power and communicate with their audiences more effectively. Landor has a global network of offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Hilton, Microsoft, BP, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Procter & Gamble, Netscape, Brasil Telecom and Coors. Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, the world's largest marketing services group. For more information, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or go to www.landor.com. |
London, March 21, 2001 - Landor Associates, the global branding consultancy, has developed a brand repositioning programme for Swedish multi-national engineering company Alfa Laval. A major component of the programme is a change in visual identity for this 117-year-old business. A world leader in separation, heat-transfer and fluid- handling technology and engineering, Alfa Laval has undergone a fundamental reorganisation since its acquisition by Industri Kapital from Tetra Laval in August 2000, the largest Scandinavian buy-out deal to date. Landor worked in partnership with Alfa Laval to devise a Brand Driver™ - the unique, central concept that powers and unites all aspects of the new visual identity and serves as a building block for the entire branding programme. "The Security of Change" was the chosen concept. This Brand Driver™ reflects a shift away from being a process-driven organisation in a move towards more customer-focused operations. As well as developing a brand that reflects the changing demands of the engineering sector in the 21st century, the repositioning builds on the company's heritage. The new wordmark represents a strong, precision-engineered structure rotating through 360 degrees. This suggests an adaptable, forward-thinking and evolving world-class organisation in a constantly changing world, while reflecting a heritage of engineering supremacy. "We have re-engineered the way in which our business is organised in response to changing market conditions," says Peter Torstensson of Alfa Laval. "Until now, we have effectively operated as three relatively self-contained divisions which - from both internal and external perspectives - have appeared to function as separate companies" "This repositioning will demonstrate to our customers that we are a truly integrated organisation able to provide total business solutions across a wide range of market sectors, rather than a collection of specialist players," continues Mr. Torstensson. Alfa Laval provides engineering solutions to market sectors ranging from wine, brewing and dairy products to oil and gas, sugar, paper and pulp manufacture. Global brands using products by Alfa Laval include Budweiser, Coca-Cola, BASF, Du Pont, BP and Tetra Pak. Ole Pedersen, Client Director at Landor says: "This rebranding program has evolved from the natural synergy of Alfa Laval and its heritage as a world-class engineering company. As well as representing a visual manifestation of the brand, the new identity reflects an organisation which has refocused its business operations and now wants to present a strong, confident but flexible operation to customers and employees" "Alfa Laval recognises its customers are more concerned about their own business challenges than those of Alfa Laval," continues Mr. Pedersen, "so there has been a fundamental shift in how Alfa Laval does business - the new focus is on customers' needs. We believe that the identity will serve as a visual rallying cry for that shift" Landor's programme will be applied across all points of touch for Alfa Laval including signage, corporate literature, stationery, product packaging, digital media streams and exhibitions. Further information on Alfa Laval's brand repositioning, including visuals, is available at: www.press.alfalaval.com Alfa Laval is a leading global provider of specialised process engineering solutions, equipment, systems and services to a wide variety of industries. Founded in 1883, Alfa Laval develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of specialised products for separation, heat-transfer and fluid-handling processes. Through its international network of sales companies and with 10,500 employees, Alfa Laval services a large, diverse customer base in more than 95 countries. Its ambition is to be the world leader in its key areas, helping to make industry more efficient, to save natural resources and to protect the environment. For further information please contact:
Stephanie Brown
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management -- using design, research, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding -- to help companies build brand power and communicate with their audiences more effectively. Landor has a global network of offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Hilton, Microsoft, BP, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Procter & Gamble, Netscape, Brasil Telecom and Coors. Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, the world's largest marketing services group. For more information, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or go to www.landor.com. |
London, March 6, 2001 - Global branding consultancy, Landor Associates, has completed a new brand positioning and corporate identity for the International Pharmaceuticals Division of one of the world's leading manufacturers of generic medicines, Alpharma Inc. This rebranding is part of a global marketing strategy to become the leader in generic pharmaceuticals. All companies within the International Pharmaceutical Division, including Cox Pharmaceuticals in the UK which was acquired by Alpharma Inc in 1998, will be known as Alpharma Limited from 1 March 2001. Alpharma Limited has the potential to produce up to eight billion tablets and capsules each year at its UK factory for supply throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The International Pharmaceutical Division of Alpharma has offices in 34 countries, 1,600 employees and manufacturing plants in the UK, Norway, Denmark and Indonesia, as well as a product portfolio with over 300 entries in the UK alone. The former brand positioning no longer reflected the full extent of Alpharma's operations. Against this background, Landor was appointed to revitalise the Company's branding both in the UK and internationally to lift it onto a platform which would enable it to compete in markets on a far larger and diverse scale than was previously possible. Landor worked in partnership with Alpharma to devise a Brand Driver™ - the unique, central concept which would power and unite all aspects of the new visual identity and serve as a building block for the entire branding programme. 'Accessible Medicine' was the chosen concept, reflecting Alpharma's desire to break down the barriers between medicine and people by making it more understandable, available and affordable to healthcare professionals and patients alike. Explaining the rationale behind the rebranding, Andrew Collier, Alpharma's UK director of sales and marketing, comments, "Understandable means that all product literature is being overhauled to ensure that both prescribers and patients understand exactly what is contained in the medicine they are taking and what effect the ingredients will have. Our products are affordable as they are marketed as generics which, by their very nature, are less expensive than branded patent medicines. Finally, through our sophisticated supply chain, we aim to ensure that prescribed medicines are readily available to all patients." Pippa Knight, Client Services Director at Landor, continues, "A rebranding which is aimed at making Alpharma's medicines more accessible means helping their customers - wholesalers, pharmacists, doctors and patients - to understand what the medicine is and what it does. In short, Alpharma wants to be in direct contact with the world it serves. This message will filter through all areas of the Alpharma business." The identity will have the most significant impact on Alpharma's packaging. A design strategy has been developed which provides guidelines for packaging for over 3,000 stock keeping units. The new design has already been launched in some European markets, with a UK rollout due in 2002. And, as lead agency and brand guardians, Landor was involved in the selection process to commission advertising agency Cobra. The rebranding programme also features new guidelines to support the implementation of the new identity, corporate literature, advertising and a new website which can be found at: www.accessiblemedicine.co.uk For further information please contact:
Stephanie Brown
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management -- using design, research, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding -- to help companies build brand power and communicate with their audiences more effectively. Landor has a global network of offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Hilton, Microsoft, BP, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Procter & Gamble, Netscape, Brasil Telecom and Coors. Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, the world's largest marketing services group. For more information, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or go to www.landor.com. |
Cincinnati, OH -- April 6, 2001. Landor Associates, one of the world's leading branding and strategic design consultancies, announced today the opening of its new office in downtown Cincinnati. Landor Cincinnati's move underscores the company's presence in the Midwest region where major clients such as Procter & Gamble, General Electric and Kroger are located. Landor Cincinnati has experienced dynamic growth during the past five years, increasing its staff from 35 to more than 80 employees.
"Our move and expansion to the Shillito building are representative of the tradition and success Landor thrives on," commented Clay Timon, president and CEO of Landor Associates. "Expanding into the Midwest shows our commitment to our clients and growth in our relationships. This is what makes Landor a world-class business."
Built in the 1920s, the new office space formerly housed a department store called Shillito's. The austere pressed-brick facades suggest an element of history and timelessness. With a six-story Victorian atrium and structures inspired by pre-Columbian Mexican design, this building is truly a monument to the past. Shillito's was one of the first examples of the Chicago commercial style, possessing traits of Art Deco, a modern design that experienced renewed popularity in the 1980s. The space has now been renovated to accommodate lofts on the upper level and businesses on the lower levels. Lupe Lopez, project manager of KZF Design, worked closely with Landor on the new office revitalization.
"We're delighted to have a company such as Landor, with its global presence and prestige, invest in the renaissance of our downtown," said Cincinnati mayor Charlie Luken. "With all that the great city of Cincinnati has to offer, we expect Landor to be the anchor tenant in this beautifully revitalized department store that will draw more members of corporate America to this emerging core business area."
Landor Associates intentionally chose this space because of its architectural distinctiveness and historical connection to Cincinnati's past. Shillito's building and Landor's company tradition together will provide a strong foundation for growth and progress in this dynamic city.
"We are thrilled to have our presence grow in the Midwest," said Phil Duncan, managing director of Landor Cincinnati. "Seven of the Fortune 500 companies are headquartered here and the manufacturing and retail industries in the Midwest are developing rapidly. Our relocation into the city demonstrates our long-term investment in becoming part of the revitalization of Cincinnati and downtown."
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management?using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding?to help companies build Breakaway Brands? and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
Contact:
Tom Custer
Landor Associates
513 221 3600
tom_custer@landor.com
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
Landor Associates has developed a new brand signature for Morgan Stanley, a crisp, modern treatment of the venerable Wall Street name. The launch of the new signature was April 2.
As part of an ongoing global branding initiative, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has changed its name to Morgan Stanley and has retained Landor to develop a more contemporary and distinctive brand expression. The name change and new identity signal the firm’s complete integration, positioning it as a merged entity. The corporate signature is one element of what will be an entirely new "look and feel" for the organization.
Artwork available upon request.
Camp Fire Boys and Girls has been widely recognized as one of the leading youth development organizations in the United States. Having recently unveiled a new name and identity as Camp Fire USA, the organization is introducing a revitalized brand image, developed by Landor Associates. The changes to the Camp Fire USA brand communicate the organization's relevance and differentiation, while positioning the brand as innovative, progressive and all-inclusive. The new identity is scheduled to be launched nationwide in August 2001.
Artwork available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
San Francisco, April 13, 2001 - Landor Associates, the world's pre-eminent branding consultancy and strategic design firm, today announced the appointment of Avery Gavigan to Managing Director of the global firm's flagship San Francisco office. Gavigan will be responsible for all daily operations as well as maintaining Landor's industry leadership, capabilities and growing client portfolio.
"We're delighted to land a person of Avery's caliber to oversee our San Francisco practice," said Craig Branigan, President of Landor Associates. "Our success at growing our already thriving branding, naming and packaging design practices depends on the strong daily leadership that Avery can provide"
"At Landor I want to ensure that we maintain leadership in our specialty practices while at the same time enhancing our holistic approach to key clients," Gavigan said. "We have an office driven by incredibly creative people and I believe I can enhance their roles by providing a macro-management style of leadership"
Prior to joining Landor, Gavigan was Chief Executive Officer of San Francisco-based Essentiel Elements. During his 2-year tenure at Essentiel Elements, Gavigan was instrumental in re-branding the all-natural body care products company and changing its market focus to re-position it as a premium spa brand. The effort paid off as sales of the core brand more than doubled during Gavigan's stint as CEO.
Gavigan started his branding and marketing career with one of Landor's largest clients, Procter & Gamble. Between P&G and Essentiel Elements, he was Director of Sales at Tambrands, a Partner with Marketing Corporation of America, and Vice President of Marketing and Vice President of Direct Marketing for DFS. While at DFS, Gavigan launched two new businesses for the company.
Gavigan holds a bachelor's degree in management from Fairfield University in Connecticut and is a graduate of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program.
For more information, contact:
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Tel: 415-477-4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management -- using design, research, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding -- to help companies build brand power and communicate with their audiences more effectively. Landor has a global network of offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Hilton, Microsoft, BP, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Procter & Gamble, Netscape, Brasil Telecom and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, the world's largest marketing services group.
For more information, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or go to www.landor.com.
Landor Associates has developed a new branding system and identity for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which will now go by its full name, no longer publicly using the acronym WCS. The new brand is based on the image of light dappling through a forest canopy or coral reef, providing a natural context for the name. The Brand Driver developed by Landor?On All Fronts?conveys the Wildlife Conservation Society's position as "wildlife champion" on the front lines of the conservation movement in the field.
Artwork available upon request.
Alec Rattray has been appointed to the newly created position of marketing director for Landor's London office. He will head a team of four and will focus on marketing the Landor brand as well as developing new business opportunities. Rattray, a senior consultant with Landor since 1998, has worked with a wide range of clients including Accenture, Nomura, Financial Times and Tetra Pak.
Photo available upon request.
Landor Associates has announced the formation of a strategic alliance with Hill & Knowlton for Latin America. As a consultancy operating in practically every country of the world, Landor chose an alliance with Hill & Knowlton to most effectively continue addressing the primary needs of clients in Latin America: helping them gain an international view of markets or position their brand for same.
More information available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
April 23, 2001 – São Paulo, Brazil — Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies, today announced the formation of a strategic alliance with Hill & Knowlton for Latin America. Landor has been involved in the Latin American marketplace for over seven years and partnering with Hill & Knowlton offers several distinct advantages for both companies. While directly supporting Landor’s worldwide business plan of providing the highest level of strategy, design and implementation for clients, the partnership also provides the most effective business structure for the company. It gives Landor the immediate opportunity to work with an in-network cadre of professionals who intimately know the market, as well as enabling both companies to continue to pursue their shared goals of focusing on the client’s brand while interacting with the client at the highest level.
As a consultancy operating in nearly every country in the world, Landor chose an alliance with Hill & Knowlton to most effectively address the primary needs of clients in Latin America-- – helping them gain an international view of markets and position their brand toward this end. Landor’s highly targeted research, along with the expertise and regional perspective of Hill & Knowlton, are significant factors guiding this partnership.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management — using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding— to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Airlines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc. which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
Contact:
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Tel: 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
We have been a leader in the field of branding — a discipline we helped to establish — since the firm was founded 60 years ago. Landor has helped create some of the world's most enduring brands — from airlines and hotels to financial services, telecommunications, consumer products and global institutions — like the Olympic Games and the Nobel Prize.
At Landor, research and strategy drive branding. We pioneered consumer brand research in the 1940s and many of the techniques introduced by Landor still set global industry standards.
We believe that successful brands begin with clear identification of their unique, ownable essence (their Brand Driver™) and are built by creating brand experiences that engage consumers. The result is brand preference. To that end, Landor offers a broad and expanding spectrum of consulting and design services — including Research, Corporate Identity, Brand Identity, Naming, Digital Branding and Branded Environments — for corporate, service and consumer brands worldwide.
Among the recent brand programs created by Landor:
Avanade
Avanade Inc. is a global "start-up" company founded as a proposed joint venture of Accenture and Microsoft. Following the March 2000 launch of an interim Web site (v1.0), Landor began strategy and design development for a much more extensive, groundbreaking Web site (v 2.0). The new site was designed to increase awareness of Avanade as the leading Internet and technology integration consulting organization, to support global recruiting efforts and to drive development of Avanade as a global brand.
BP
Several acquisitions needed to be united under one corporate identity. Defining the positioning for the new company as "beyond petroleum," Landor developed a new identity that highlights how BP's interlocking parts form one vibrant whole. We are extending the new branding system to print materials, vehicles and ultimately to retail environments.
Bradesco
The comprehensive corporate identity system and visual identity for Banco Bradesco, Latin America's largest private bank, repositions the bank as a technology leader.
bmi british midland
Expansion into transatlantic services, membership in Star Alliance, and an increase in the size of the fleet all led British Midland — Europe's largest independent airline — to ask Landor to create a new name, brand and identity.
France Telecom
Landor employed naming strategies to provide this telecommunications group with an international appeal. An identity system was implemented to pair existing values of service and quality with the desired values of warmth, flexibility and openness — resulting in the creative use of the ampersand symbol.
Frito-Lay
In an ongoing relationship, Landor has developed brand strategy and packaging systems for Frito-Lay's leading snack brands, including Doritos, Lay's, Rold Gold, Cheetos, Tostitos and Fritos.
ITT Industries
The new global "Engineered Blocks" identity system builds on the company's heritage while clarifying that forward-looking ITT Industries focuses on making products that are "Engineered for Life."
KFC
Landor revitalized KFC's brand heritage by building on the brand's core value of good convenient food and reconnecting it with the globally recognized image of the Kentucky Colonel.
Lilly
Realizing the importance of communicating with a diverse number of audiences, this leading pharmaceutical company hired Landor to develop a strategy that would evolve Lilly from a manufacturer to a branded corporation — a process that was also applied to the company's Web site. The new brand positioning, based on the concept of "Answers," encompasses both scientific answers (innovation) and questions answered (information sharing).
Microsoft
Since being named Microsoft's strategic design partner, Landor has provided a wide range of branding services — from naming, brand strategy, research and brand identity system development to package, print, Web site and user interface design.
Pepsi
Repositioning Pepsi's brand identity worldwide, Landor used blue as a conceptual platform and differentiating color to create distinctive new packaging.
Pizza Hut
By retaining the red roof as an identifying symbol, Landor helped reinforce the perception of Pizza Hut as a destination. To further differentiate the brand, a freehand typography was used along with an entire palette of icons that symbolized the freshness of its ingredients and ultimately provided Pizza Hut with the brand relevance it desired.
The Olympic Games
As a leader in Olympic branding, we are currently designing a comprehensive branding and design program for the 2002 Winter Games to be held in Salt Lake City. Landor also designed the symbol of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and a comprehensive identity branding program for the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.
Xerox
The partially digitized "X" symbol and new corporate identity system communicate Xerox's move into digital information sharing and management.
Coleman
The new labeling system created by Landor for Coleman Coolers was designed to communicate the continued innovation and uniqueness of this 100-year-old brand. The color-coded labels, featuring whimsical icons that depict various activities appropriate for the Coleman Cooler, distinguish each product according to its price points, retail distribution and intended customers.
The legendary German designer, Walter Landor, founded Landor Associates in San Francisco in 1941. A pioneer in the field of branding, he set out to prove that design, when backed by consumer insight, could be a powerful identity and branding tool. In his own words, "Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." This conviction drove him to create powerful brands with emotional appeal.
Landor Associates has been building its global network since 1972, opening offices first in Tokyo, then in Mexico City and New York. Landor expanded its presence into Europe in 1984, first with London, then Paris and, in 1996, Hamburg. Hong Kong opened in 1986, Seattle in 1996, followed by Cincinnati, Irvine and Sydney in 1999. 2000 was marked by the opening of the Chicago, Vienna and Dubai offices.
Landor's corporate symbol is The Klamath, a ferryboat that Walter Landor rescued from retirement to serve as the company's floating design studio and flagship office in San Francisco Bay from 1964 - 1987. The Klamath endures as a symbol of creativity and insight.
Charlie Wrench
Chief Executive Officer
Landor has over 600 employees worldwide. Experienced in branding across all fields of commerce and culture, Our people can articulate across many languages and cultural nuances. They serve local and international clients and share knowledge through a global network and learning initiatives.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices in the Americas, Asia and Europe. These include full-service consulting and design studios located in San Francisco (international headquarters) as well as New York, Seattle, Cincinnati, Chicago, Irvine, Mexico City, London, Paris, Hamburg, Sydney, Tokyo and Hong Kong, plus marketing offices based in São Paulo, Madrid, Milan, Dubai and Singapore.
Landor is a part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
To learn more about how Landor can partner with you to build your brand, please contact:
Hayes Roth
Chief Marketing Officer
212 - 614 - 4505 or 1 (888) 2LANDOR
hayes_roth@nyc.landor.com
www.landor.com
1.888.2LANDOR
Buenos Aires – May 2, 2001 – Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies, has developed a new brand positioning and corporate identity for DST, a global alliance of eight tubular steel mills that together are global market leaders. The company made the announcement on the first day of the Houston Offshore Technology Conference.
The new brand, Tenaris, provides the focus and platform for global marketing to major customers, while the branding system unifies and refreshes the brands of the eight participating steel mills in their own markets. Techint Group, a major industrial organization with headquarters in Argentina, sponsored the initiative and chose Landor because of its worldwide presence and experience in working with multinational companies. Landor created the new positioning to reinforce the corporate vision of the alliance as redefining service via its global sales and service network.
The name Tenaris is based on the Latin word "tenax," meaning tenacious or holding a firm grip. Reflecting on the international flavor of the company, Tenaris has significant meaning in Greek and Japanese as well.
"The new Tenaris identity exemplifies the trend among industrial organizations to communicate more forcefully an Internet-driven global strategy to deliver superior service," said Robin Thompson, brand consultant at Landor Associates. "Companies must realize that their brand has to speak to multiple cultures if they wish to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace."
DST -- the brand being replaced by Tenaris -- was created by Techint Group in 1996, by forging an alliance of three manufacturers of seamless steel tubes, each well-known in its local market. In Italy, the Dalmine brand has been synonymous with steel tubes for over 90 years. In Argentina, the name Siderca is known worldwide for its export sales. In Mexico, the Tamsa name is closely linked to one of the largest oil industries in the world. Under DST, the alliance partners share knowledge and support one another in global competition. A joint venture with NKK, a leading Japanese steelmaker, known as NKKTubes, has enriched Tenaris with NKK’s technological excellence. Canada’s AlgomaTubes and Venezuela’s Tavsa also joined the alliance and added to its presence in two further major markets.
The new Tenaris brand now helps to reinforce the response of DST to the increased globalization of its customers.
About Landor
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management -- using design, research, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding -- to help companies build brand power and communicate with their audiences more effectively. Landor has a global network of offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Hilton, Microsoft, BP, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Procter & Gamble, Netscape, Brasil Telecom and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc, which has 340 offices in 73 countries around the world. Young & Rubicam is a member of WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
Daphne brings approximately 20 years of experience to Landor’s Research practice, which she will direct from the San Francisco office. She has conducted qualitative and quantitative market research throughout the world in most industry sectors. Her client portfolio includes research projects for HP, Gucci, Clorox, Bank of America, JC Penney, Pacific Bell, Ford, Chevron and Visa. Prior to joining Landor, Daphne led research assignments at Royal Philips Electronics N.V., Lieberman Research and Research International. Daphne is known for her creative and innovative approaches to research design, having been an early pioneer in jury selection, voter behavior and health care research. She has a doctorate in Cognitive Psychology, with a minor in Statistics.
Photo available upon request.
In these new roles, Margaret and Nicolas will work in partnership and lead all creative design and execution for the San Francisco office. A principal of the company, Margaret joined Landor in 1985 and has been a Creative Director in the San Francisco office since 1993. In her 15 years with the company, Margaret has directed major programs for HP, Lucent Technologies, Xerox, IBM, Netscape, Pan Pacific, The Gap, Visteon and the Salt Lake Winter Olympics 2002. Most recently Margaret has extended her portfolio of successes with Accenture, H&R Block and Pathé, the French entertainment media group.
Nicolas joined Landor in 1987 and has been a Creative Director in San Francisco since 1995. Over the years Nicolas has been a key factor in the creative development of packaging programs for clients such as Miller Brewing Company, Quaker, Philip Morris and Gerber. In addition he has fostered long-term relationships with Brown Forman and Sutter Homes (both extending over a 10-year period) and more recently, he and his team have been instrumental in working with clients such as Coors, Rand McNally, Energizer, Power Bar, A. G. Ferrari, Metabolife, Albertson’s, Coleman and Skyy Spirits.
Photo available upon request.
Ed Rice has been appointed Executive Director, Client Development. In this new position, he will lead Landor’s new business development efforts in the Americas. Ed joined Landor in 1987 as Director of Marketing in San Francisco and was later promoted to Executive Marketing Director. He subsequently managed the team that pitched Microsoft and won that account, leading to the opening of our Seattle office. Ed served as Seattle’s Managing Director until 1997, when he returned to the San Francisco office to co-lead, with Nicolas Aparicio, our efforts in Brand Identity. His return to San Francisco resulted in the expansion of our Coors business and the addition of numerous other client brands to our portfolio, including Coleman, Clorox, Dreyer’s, Evercare, Energizer, Rand McNally and 7Up.
Photo available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
May 10, 2001 — Hong Kong SAR, China — The government of Hong Kong SAR today launched its new brand strategy and identity at the FORTUNE Global Forum. Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Mr. Tung Chee Hwa, unveiled the dragon identity that was created by Landor Associates. The visual identity is one component of a broader campaign to promote Hong Kong that includes public relations activities led by Burson-Marsteller, which developed the brand positioning and tag line "Asia's World City", and research conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide.
To communicate the vision of the new Hong Kong brand, Landor developed a strategy and a look and feel for the SAR brand Web site that includes a brand overview, details on the visual identity system and brand platform, press releases, videos, Webcasts and more.
Click here to visit and find out more about the new Hong Kong brand.
About Landor
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
For more information, contact:
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Tel: 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
May 23, 2001 - San Francisco, CA - Landor Associates has developed a new identity for The Body Positive, a Bay Area non-profit organization dedicated to combating the growing prevalence of eating disorders and poor body image among teens and children. The new identity was launched at the Palace of Fine Arts on May 23, at the first in a series of Change Your Focus fund-raising events.
Founded in 1995, the organization is comprised of a multidisciplinary team of professionals with backgrounds in education and mental health - many of whom have personal experience with eating disorders. The Body Positive (TBP) offers training for adult and youth leaders nationwide and have produced BodyTalk, an award-winning documentary series for youth, as part of their body acceptance program.
The original identity for TBP was gender specific and inappropriate for the audiences TBP team wished to reach. Landor was provided with the opportunity to reinvent the organization by creating a visual message that would effectively embody its mission, cut across gender lines, and appeal to youth and adults. We were also given the opportunity to design a Web site to serve as an informational and interactive resource for youth searching for support, and for adults looking for resources.
Our approach to the identity redesign was two-tiered. First, we created a signature that quickly and memorably delivers the brand message - to transform perceptions from negative and stereotypical to positive and unique. The second tier messaging is extremely flexible - it provides an area to verbally communicate diverse messages to an array of audiences.
Millions of our youth are affected with an unrealistic body image. The Body Positive is devoted to helping change our culture's focus on the way we look. Landor is proud of the role we have played in creating The Body Positive's brand identity and Web site.
About Landor
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands(tm) and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Tel: 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
British Design & Art Direction 2001 Annual
BP (BP Amoco Merger) - Appearance in the Annual
CLIO Awards 2001
BP (BP Amoco Merger) - Silver Award (Corporate Identity)
H&R Block Revitalization - Gold Award (Corporate Identity)
AIGA Annual 2001
BP (BP Amoco Merger) - Appearance in Exhibit
HP Invent Identity System - Appearance in Exhibit
H&R Block Revitalization - Appearance in Exhibit
Exhibit Design Awards
Patagonia Exhibit - Special Merit Award
Artwork is available upon request
After returning to Landor in 1997, Monica Au served as Hong Kong's Creative Director for three years. In her new role as Client Managing Director and General Manager Hong Kong, Monica will focus her considerable energy and talent to developing Landor's Asia- Pacific business. She will also continue to work with our consultancy team in providing high-level brand strategy to our clients, particularly in the Chinese market.
Vincenzo Perri will become Hong Kong's new Creative Director after almost five years with Landor and having led some of our most exciting brand programs. He will have full responsibility for the creative team and will be charged with ensuring that we continue to develop excellent creative solutions for our clients.
Photos are available upon request.
On May 26, about 150 pigs took center stage in Seattle as part of the Pike Place Market Foundation's "Pigs on Parade" event. Modeled after the "Cows on Parade" public-art fundraisers held in Chicago and New York, the parade raised money for the Market Foundation, providing services to the thousands of low-income people who use their clinic, senior center, child-care and food-bank programs. Landor was one of the many companies that participated in the event by purchasing a fiberglass pig and transforming it into a work of art. Landor's entry will be featured atop the Pike Place Market.
About Landor Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands? and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com
Contact:
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Tel: 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
June 14, 2001 ? San Francisco, CA -- Consumers consider a company?s stock performance relatively unimportant to driving brand loyalty according to Landor Associate?s 2001 Global ImagePower® survey. This finding, part of Landor?s annual survey and ranking of the top 250 technology brands, should be welcome news for business leaders building a brand while equity markets are in turmoil.
"It?s not surprising that financial performance has relatively little effect on brand resonance for companies that are successful in defining their positive brand attributes with customers," said Dave Studeman, President of Digital Branding, Landor Associates. "While a de-listing can raise serious concerns about the long-term prospects for a company, a strong brand is typically able to ride out a yo-yoing stock market."
Landor Global ImagePower® is the result of a 10-country survey of more than 11,000 Internet users showing that a stock price rated last or next to last among seven different aspects that contribute to brand strength. Other attributes surveyed included: corporate reputation, name brand recognition, company expertise, advertising, online presence and CEO reputation/personality. Landor surveyed Internet audiences from the United States, as well as Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico and Spain.
Conducted annually, Global ImagePower® looks at the top 250 technology brands and measures how brands are perceived by customers across a number of core brand positions. Key findings include:
Six trends have emerged from the survey that should serve as rules for companies who wish to create and maintain powerful and globally competitive brands.
About Landor ImagePower®
Landor ImagePower® is the proprietary research work of Landor Associates and was conducted in cooperation with ACNielsen, a global leader in market research, information and analysis. The survey evaluated a total of 250 technology-related brands in the U.S., and 125 technology-related brands in Mexico, Brazil, China, Japan, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Spain and the U.K. It was conducted using an online quantitative data collection methodology and drew from Internet users. Results track customers? opinions and perceptions across a number of core brand attributes.
Download the Executive Summary and Press Release in Adobe® Acrobat® format.Note to editors: An abbreviated version of the Landor Global ImagePower® study, as well as an executive summary, graphs and charts, are available upon request. Please contact Kira Storch at 415-477-4546 or kira_storch@sfo.cohnwolfe.com.
About Landor Associates
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Airlines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Telephone: (415) 477-4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
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Landor/LKS in Sydney has developed a new identity for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), which will be hosted by the Australian government this October in Brisbane and broadcast worldwide. This biennial event brings together almost one-third of the world1s leaders, mainly presidents and prime ministers, to discuss issues including health, education, good governance, conflict prevention and resolution, debt relief and sustainable development.
According to Landor/LKS Creative Director Mike Staniford, it was "a huge challenge to develop an identity which is cross-cultural, is underpinned with the essence of our Australian culture and represents the coming together of the heads of government" The new identity is the visual expression of a positive, dynamic and multicultural organization and event. A representation of community and of coming together, the identity suggests people around a table or globe in the spirit of cooperation. The color palette is fresh and vibrant and encompasses the Aboriginal heritage of Australia and the colors of the Australian flag.
Artwork is available upon request.
The packaging for Microsoft® Office 2001 for Mac has been recognized as a Gold winner in the 2001 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). Cosponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Business Week magazine, IDEA is an annual competition honoring products that display exceptional form, usability features and interactive qualities. Microsoft, Landor Associates, Ivy Hill Corp. and Radius Product Development, Inc., worked together to create the brightly colored, reusable plastic case in which CD-ROM copies of Office 2001 for Mac are sold. The design received a Gold Award in the Packaging Structures category in this year1s competition.
In contrast to the cardboard boxes that house most software products, the Office 2001 for Mac package contains extra sleeves in which customers can store and transport their favorite CD-ROMs or compact discs. IDEA judges praised the design for its reusability and elimination of wasteful packing materials.
Artwork is available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world1s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
INTRODUCTION
Landor Global ImagePower® 2001 is a study of technology brands -- how they rank, in which countries, and the factors that drive their success and failure. In particular, the study measures how brands are perceived by customers in a slowing technology economy -- the critical testing point as to which strategies define long-term leaders and losers.
This year, our study captures the perceptions of consumers in ten countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia. These include the United States, Mexico, Brazil, China, Japan, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, we have focused our audience on Internet users – the most diverse consumer target ever to share a common brand channel. These audiences are not passive marketing targets. They actively seek information, even beyond their countries’ borders. They base their perceptions and decisions on the messages companies bring to them. Understanding how Internet users think about technology is vital to understanding how technology brands can be successfully leveraged for continued profitability, opportunity and growth across the globe.
Landor’s Global ImagePower is the proprietary research work of Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. The study was conducted in cooperation with ACNielsen Online.
Results reveal customers’ opinions and perceptions about what they consider to be successful technology brands.
Specific brand attributes tested were:
Every attribute is measured quantitatively, enabling one brand to be compared objectively with another using identical criteria. The U.S.-based portion of our study offers category analyses in the areas of entertainment, consumer electronics, financial brands, telecommunications, wireless, and search engines/portals/ISPs. The study also includes comparisons from last year’s results.
Not only will CEOs discover how customers perceive their brands and their competitors’ brands, but technology companies will learn what actions and reactions these insights will require – worldwide -- to achieve strong brand leadership, customer loyalty and growth.
We are proud to introduce this year’s expanded edition of our annual survey and look forward to sharing our findings with you.
Sincerely,
Dave Studeman
President, Digital Branding President
dave_studeman@sfo.landor.com
Craig Branigan
President and Chief Operating Officer
craig_branigan@sfo.landor.com
Hayes Roth
Vice President, Americas Marketing
hayes_roth@nyc.landor.com
Allen Adamson
Managing Director, Landor New York
allen_adamson@nyc.landor.com
Download the Executive Summary and Press Release in Adobe® Acrobat® format.METHODOLOGY
The Landor Global ImagePower 2001 survey evaluated technology-related brands in ten countries: the United States, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom. The survey evaluated both regional and global brands. It included a total of 250 brands in the U.S. and 125 brands in each of the other nine countries. Of these, 75 were global brands, and were therefore shared among all ten countries' surveys, while the others were regionally specific.
The survey was conducted using an online quantitative data collection methodology. The results in this report represent the third year of findings in the U.S. and the first year internationally. Fieldwork was conducted in the early spring of 2001.
To accommodate the large number of brands in the study, five versions of the questionnaire were created, with each version covering approximately 50 brands. A comparable sample of respondents was recruited to complete each version. After the fieldwork was completed, the samples were matched by weighting the data to represent the general online population to eliminate systematic differences based on variable sample composition.
Survey participants were recruited from the online population through ACNielsen Online. In order to qualify for the survey, respondents had to reside in the country of the survey, have access to the Internet and be between the ages of 18 and 64. Post data cleaning, the survey yielded a total of 6,500 responses in the U.S., and approximately 500 responses in each of the other countries. For each country, potential participants were sent an email inviting them to participate and directing them to the URL address to complete the study. To encourage participation and increase the response rate, respondents were offered incentives of US$5-12, depending on which country they were from.
SNAPSHOT OF FINDINGS: UNITED STATES
SNAPSHOT OF FINDINGS: GLOBAL
TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2001-2002
Several trends have emerged from the survey as rules for companies wishing to create and maintain a powerful and globally competitive brand.
What’s In:
What’s Out:
For more information:
Landor has been selected by Land Rover to conduct a global brand review and development program. The appointment is with a view toward Landor joining Young & Rubicam in a long-term, cross-discipline global relationship with Land Rover. Landor will work in partnership with the newly formed Land Rover Brand Development Team to help establish and grow the brand globally - communicating the brand's unique heritage as well as its contemporary relevance to consumers. More specifically, Landor will review what is needed in terms of all aspects of the brand identity around the world. They will then develop solutions that address, as required, all aspects of the brand's expression.
Landor/LKS has developed a new name, visual identity and tag line for Foster's Brewing Group, the Australian premium beverage company. Landor started by advising the client that the name "Foster's Group" would more accurately reflect the company's diverse offerings which - with the acquisition of Beringer Wine Estates - now includes interests in wine, spirits, hospitality and property as well as in brewing. According to Landor consultant Damian Borchok, "One of our key challenges was to create an identity relevant to the whole organization when the name Foster's is already so powerfully linked with beer. This led us to create an identity that includes differently shaped and colored glasses. They speak clearly of Foster's diverse businesses in the premium beverage category." A new tag line, "Inspiring Global Enjoyment," was also developed to reinforce Foster's position as a global premium branded company that provides enjoyment around the world through all its activities.
Artwork is available upon request.
Bia Montero, who previously spent five years as Landor's representative in Sao Paulo, has returned to assume the role of Landor Representative/Madrid, based in Lisbon, Portugal. Bia will act as Landor's agent for new business development in Portugal as well as in other Portuguese and Spanish-speaking markets.
Landor has been very active in Portugal during the last 10 years with clients that include Seagram, Feira Nova, BPI, Compal, Amorim and The Portuguese Stock Exchange.
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands(tm) and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR, visit www.landor.com, or contact:
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Tel: 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
June 13, 2001 London, United Kingdom Landor has created the packaging for Walkers' new Heinz Tomato Ketchup flavour crisps, to be launched this summer. This marks the first time the number one UK food brand, Walkers, has teamed up with another food manufacturer to develop a co-branded product. Co-branding with Heinz will increase customer perceptions of the quality of the tomato flavouring. There is a natural fit between the Walkers and Heinz brands, both of which stand for high quality and product innovation.
Landor investigated how the co-branding could work most effectively on packaging, as both the Walkers banner sun and the Heinz keystone are powerful brand marks in their own rights. Additionally, the colour of the packaging had to be differentiated from existing Walkers products.
The Walkers banner sun and the Heinz keystone are given equal emphasis on the packaging. An additional element the tomato ketchup "splat" was added to suggest richness and fun, values often associated with the Heinz brand. A green strip runs along the top and bottom of the package to distinguish the Heinz flavour from other Walkers products.
Landor has worked with Walkers as their brand design consultancy for the last five years across the entire brand portfolio, including the recently relaunched Smiths Square Crisps, acquired by Walkers in 1998.
The new packaging launch will be supported by a national marketing campaign involving TV advertising by agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO.
Stephanie Brown or Derek Johnston
Tel: 020 7880 8000
Landor Associates
Walkers
Emma Snaith
Tel: 01189 308 266
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. Landor takes a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as Walkers, bmi british midland, Seagrams, Philip Morris, BP, FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Procter & Gamble and France Telecom.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
June 27, 2001 London, United Kingdom Landor has been appointed by Land Rover to undertake a global brand review and development programme. Landor was selected from a shortlist of three consultancies in a credentials pitch. The appointment is with a view to Landor joining Young & Rubicam in a long-term, cross-discipline global relationship with Land Rover.
Unique among automotive manufacturers, Land Rover has produced four-wheel-drive vehicles since 1948, and will reach a landmark three million units later this year. Proud of its history and excited about its future, Land Rover was acquired by Ford Motor Company in July 2000. It is now part of Ford's Premier Automotive Group, alongside Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo and Lincoln Mercury.
Landor will work in partnership with the newly formed Land Rover Brand Development Team to help establish and grow the brand globally communicating both the brand's unique heritage and also its contemporary relevance to consumers. More specifically, Landor will review all aspects of the brand identity throughout the world and develop strategies to best express that identity.
Charlie Wilson, Brand Development Manager, Global Marketing at Land Rover says, "Drive, enthusiasm and creativity are emotions that underpin Land Rover. We selected Landor to become our brand partner because we believe that they demonstrate those same traits. We also believe that Landor's holistic approach to branding is second to none. Our hope is that Landor will become Land Rover's advocate inspired and inspiring the brand over the long term."
Commenting on Landor's appointment, Charles Wrench, Managing Director at Landor London says, "This is a really exciting win for us. Land Rover is one of the world's great brands but it is also one of the automotive industry's least leveraged brands. It presents tremendous opportunities for us here at Landor and we can't wait to play our part."
Stephanie Brown
Landor Associates
Tel: 020 7880 8316
Charlie Wilson
Land Rover
Tel: 01926 482 407
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. Landor takes a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as bmi british midland, BP, Walkers, FedEx, France Telecom, Microsoft, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games and Alamo.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
Landor branding is holistic. We manage the life cycle of a brand by offering our clients a full range of services. Companies worldwide trust Landor with the development of a sophisticated brand strategy, beginning with a signature and name, and carrying that identity into packaging, signage, environments, and Web applications.
Branding for digital media is founded in technology as well as traditional branding principles. Landor’s expertise in online design, application development, and brand asset management are cumulative capabilities that ensure end–to–end brand creation, maintenance, and management for a total identity solution.
Landor’s team of strategic branding consultants, technology consultants, and visual designers work together to select the best solutions for our clients’ specific needs.
As brand managers, product managers and market executives often come and go every few years, an ongoing relationship with an outside partner that has an intimate understanding of your company’s brands can be invaluable. We work with our clients as their long–term brand stewards and champions, helping guide the continued evolution and architecture of their brands. In this role, we also act in concert with your company’s partners – their advertising agencies, public relations firms and others – to ensure branding messages and positioning are clearly and consistently communicated across all media and marketing activities.
These tools help individuals and organizations use technology to publish information and organize projects.
Communication tools include:
Brand guideline sites provide immediate global access to brand assets, eliminating "off–brand" local attempts. Such tools serve two important functions. First, these web–based systems enable individuals to share in the process of reviewing assets, creating a sense of ownership and understanding of the brand. Second, built–in security and permission–based access protect the integrity of brand assets.
Brand consistency tools include:
The ongoing development of new and improving technologies has made our communication landscape increasingly complex. Marketing and brand managers need ways to simplify and clarify messaging in the digital space. By designing to meet the growing expectations users bring to new media, we provide our clients with the means to speak clearly to their customers and directly address their unique audiences.
We create Web sites, intranets, and extranets as branded experiences. Our Web development process is designed to ensure overall brand consistency. In the digital arena, sound planning and flawless execution are crucial to supporting the brand.
Landor Web sites meet the most rigorous standards for user–centric design. We never adopt a complex solution when a simple one will be more effective. Using technology gratuitously will inevitably result in an inferior user experience and thus diminish valuable brand equity. We investigate ways to best communicate to an audience and determine solutions accordingly.
To ensure quality, the main phases of our proven development process include:
Landor’s digital design expertise also extends beyond Web–based applications. Our team works collaboratively to develop a consistent and engaging brand experience across a variety of media. We design interfaces for a range of interactive environments including CD–ROMs, DVDs, plasma displays, WAP devices, kiosks, PDAs, and handheld computers. Usability remains our primary focus in the development of these communication tools. The diversity of the digital environment presents tremendous opportunity to communicate your brand. Our strategic process ensures that this is accomplished with integrity, clarity and quality.
Landor has a full motion graphics and video editing suite to meet our clients' needs for both broadcast and the Web. We provide motion marks and animation for educational and promotional materials as well as for event-specific needs, such as brand launches.
Audio BrandingToday audio branding extends beyond the traditional mediums of radio and television. Audio brands can be heard on the Web, as well as on cell phones, PDAs, and in retail locations. The challenge for companies that utilize audio branding is to make a close connection between their audio brand and their visual identity. At Landor we create audio brands that provide a consistent brand experience for your customers.
A global asset management system allows companies to be more efficient by creating a single point of access for brand assets, usage guidelines, finished marketing materials and other collateral. Companies can easily track assets as they move between agency, client and client partners. This also enables version control and accountability as well as real–time collaborative editing of brand assets online. Centralized sourcing prevents wasted time searching for or needlessly reproducing existing assets. Users can download directly from the Web, decreasing the costs associated with distributing physical assets such as artwork, photography, or fonts.
Brand efficiency tools and features include:
These tools allow organizations to gain broad cost savings by leveraging specific technologies across corporate worldwide business processes and systems.
Brand extensibility tools and features include:
Digital technology is drastically changing the way customers and companies interact. Branding has become a reciprocal process: Companies not only managed their own brands but also rely on their customers to influence the brand relationship. Digital communication is increasing the speed at which these relationships are formed, making digital technologies a requirement for an effective brand strategy.
A strong brand in the digital world is built on:*
Differentiation. Presenting a brand’s unique interactive capabilities while extending its core offering.
Relevance. Making the experience compelling by empowering users to pursue the information they want.
Esteem. Producing a positive experience that satisfies the user’s needs thereby increasing respect for the brand.
Knowledge. Providing information and relevant offerings that were previously unavailable or difficult to obtain.
Digital branding is a crucial step in the rollout, maintenance, and communication of your brand. Consistent delivery of an engaging brand experience across every point of customer interaction has become an integral aspect of your business’ success. Landor digital branding ensures:
*This is a part of the BrandAsset© Valuator, a registered trademark of Young & Rubicam, Inc.
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Technology must be stable, invisible and appropriate to the application. As branding consultants, we bring strategic thinking to asset management. Your company’s assets may include:
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Collecting, maintaining and distributing these assets is a critical task and can be very complicated. We streamline and organize this process by creating brand asset management solutions that are based on a rigorously client–centric approach. We do not resell off–the–shelf software packages; instead, we develop customized solutions for each client's specific needs.
Successful brand asset management means that we:
The resulting Web–based tools help our clients realize superior brand consistency, increased efficiency, and reduced operating expenses and business costs. These tools can be organized into four broadly described approaches:
Communication These sites (extranets and project management sites) improve collaboration among users through project scheduling, forecasting, reporting, and budgeting.
Brand Consistency Brand information and assets are made available to end users in a one–way distribution model (e.g., brand guidelines and educational sites).
Brand Efficiency Communication becomes two-way when the system customizes the information or assets that are available to the end user (e.g., brand asset management sites and online repositories).
Brand Extensibility Enterprise–level asset management systems extend into mission–critical business processes, enabling company–wide brand consistency and cost savings.
August 17, 2001 – Sydney, Australia — LKS and Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading brand consultancies, have created a new name and identity for the first truly regional online travel agency in the Asia-Pacific.
The work is the result of a collaborative effort between LKS - Landor’s Australian affiliate – and Landor’s Hong Kong office. This partnership helped ensure that the new name, identity and overall brand impression would resonate with the diverse Eastern and Western cultures of the region.
The new brand name, ZUJI™, replaces the interim name Travel Exchange Asia. It is expected to be officially launched early next year.
ZUJI™ is a joint venture of 11 of the region’s leading airlines including Air New Zealand, Ansett, Cathay Pacific, Qantas and Singapore Airlines. Travelocity.com, the world’s largest travel site, is also a partner.
"With its pedigree in Asia-Pacific travel and e-business, ZUJI™ is poised to become the region’s preeminent online travel brand," said Mike Staniford, LKS Creative Director. "To match this potential it was important that the new brand convey the stature of both the airline partners and Travelocity.com, ZUJI™’s commitment to quality service as well as the sense of discovery, colour and excitement you’d expect from the Asia-Pacific travel experience."
"One of our biggest challenges was ensuring the ZUJI™ brand would relate to the diverse Eastern and Western cultures of the region," added Staniford.
The naming program was a three-month process. More than 300 options were created and evaluated by Landor’s naming consultants before ZUJI™ was selected. The name is derived from Mandarin and loosely translates as ‘footprint’.
Staniford notes, "Whilst the name has a strong Asian flavour it also has an international feel. We conducted linguistic checks across 17 countries as it was essential that the name was easy to pronounce and wasn’t culturally offensive."
ZUJI™’s logo features a blue-green eastward-pointing arrow to connote movement, travel and discovery across Asia and the Pacific.
"ZUJI™ is an online travel company - it’s also very much a 21st century brand. It was important that ZUJI™ represents the whole region from a contemporary perspective without being culture-specific," added Michael Ip, Landor Hong Kong’s Managing Director.
LKS and Landor Associates were awarded the ZUJI™ project following a three-way pitch with Enterprise IG and Interbrand.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading brand consultancy with more than 20 offices worldwide, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo in the Asia-Pacific region.
Landor’s expertise in the travel category includes re-branding programs for more than 40 airlines including ZUJI™ joint venture partners Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Garuda Indonesia and Silk Air.
Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please visit www.landor.com.
LKS is Australia’s leading branding and design consultancy. With over 22 years experience in creating, positioning and revitalizing brands in Australia and through their affiliation with Landor Associates, they combine local Australian expertise with international expertise. LKS is Landor’s official affiliate for Australia and New Zealand.
For more information about LKS, please visit www.lksdesign.com.au.
ZUJI™ (www.zuji.com) aims to be the leading Asia-Pacific business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) travel portal. It will offer the full spectrum of travel services and products including airline tickets, hotels, car rentals and tour packages. ZUJI™ is powered by leading-edge technology to effectively deliver on its products and services, providing travellers to the site a truly unique and memorable experience.
ZUJI™ is a joint venture of 11 leading Asia-Pacific airlines and Travelocity.com, the world’s largest travel site. The 11 airlines are Air New Zealand, Ansett, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, EVA Air, Garuda Indonesia, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Royal Brunei Airlines, Silk Air and Singapore Airlines.
Issued by Landor Associates.
Michael Ip
Managing Director, Landor Asia Pacific
Telephone: 852 2114 8188
michael_ip@hk.landor.com
Mike Staniford
Creative Director
Landor LKS
Telephone: 61 2 9959 4800
mike_staniford@lksdesign.com.au
www.lksdesign.com.au
Damian Borchok
Corporate Branding Consultant
Landor LKS
Telephone: 61 2 9959 4800
damian_borchok@lksdesign.com.au
www.lksdesign.com.au
David Carlos
Branding Consultant
Telephone: 852 2114 8131
david_carlos@hk.landor.com
WatchGuard Technologies, a Seattle-based Internet and server security company, has partnered with Landor in developing a new brandline, identity, and look and feel. In the computer security industry, typical brand symbolism is rooted in cold, concrete, traditional images of "security" — locks, safes and solid blocks of stone and metal — that defend against malicious invaders. The new WatchGuard brand leads the industry out of the trenches, elevating security issues to approachable, common-business-sense levels.
The look and feel is based in warm, comfortable tones of red, with hand-drawn images of ordinary business people calmly working, not stressed-out executives worrying that their networks will soon be breached.
The new brandline, "Designing Peace of Mind," confirms the integrity of WatchGuard products and services, promising business leaders that they can focus on other business needs once their network security is assured.
The new identity is the pairing of a handcrafted "W" and "G." The mark symbolizes a protective, secure labyrinth of walls and tunnels that render hackers ineffective, thus securing a company’s digital assets. As brand equity increases, the corporate name can be easily removed. This will allow the company to expand its offerings without the "security" connotation of the WatchGuard name, while continuing to leverage the equity of the WG mark.
Artwork is available upon request.
Nick Russell has joined Landor Associates as Director of Internal Branding for the Strategic Services Group in San Francisco. Internal Branding drives bottom-line growth and increased brand value by aligning an organization’s structure and culture with its brand vision, values and image. Shifts in staff behavior are driven by a combination of internal communications and operational changes. Once this happens, the company is able to deliver its unique brand promise consistently to its customers.
Nick has thirteen years of consulting experience in organization design and development, as well as in the management of change. In addition to brand management, his experience covers such strategic change issues as the integration of acquisitions, the transition from monopoly to competitive markets, top management succession and the acceptance of global ERP systems. Nick’s clients for this work have included Tetra Pak, British Telecom, Baxter, Bose, Dow Chemical, Vanguard, Nuclear Electric (now British Energy), BP, Price Waterhouse and IBM.
Photo is available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR.
We invite you to review our perspectives on a wide range of strategic branding and design issues. In this section, you'll find articles and commentaries, quotes, speech synopses, and white papers that reflect some of the basic philosophies behind Landor's branding process.
What makes Landor the world's preeminent and most successful brand consulting and design firm? Without question, it is the eclectic blend of talented people who bring fresh ideas and enthusiasm to our clients - and to the workplace - every day.
For questions about jobs and internships:
Marnie Hrones
Associate Director, Recruiting
Telephone: +1 415 365 4443
marnie_hrones@sfo.landor.com
For questions about design internships:
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Telephone: +1 206 505 7526
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Managing Director
Telephone: +1 206 505 7500
john_rubino@sea.landor.com
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Annett Kohlmann
Marketing Coordinator
Telephone: +1 206 505 7545
annett_kohlmann@sea.landor.com
Following the award-winning package design it created for Office:mac 2001, Landor has developed a new design for Office:mac v.X. This latest look and feel for one of Microsoft's most popular lines of software was applied to the entire suite (Office:mac), as well as to the individually packaged products (Word, Excel and PowerPoint).
The packaging's primary design feature is composed of three fluid shapes that protrude from the die-cut box. These amorphous shapes echo the new look and feel and user interface design — called "Aquafication" — Apple has applied to the recently released Mac OS X operating system. This new convention creates a very fluid experience for the user whereby icons bulge or emerge out of the desktop "dock."
Color, texture and structure were also given careful consideration. Each product is easily distinguished by a color designation: yellow shapes for Office:mac, blue for Word, orange for PowerPoint and green for Excel. The box is a simple matte gray color that complements the new Mac hardware, which has a matte steel finish. The product itself is housed in a custom-made plastic thermaform case, forming three-dimensional shapes that protrude from the box.
Special typographical elements were also developed for this particular line. The ":mac" identity located in the lower left-hand corner of the box was "aquafied" as were all of the actual application icons.
Photos are available upon request.
Following its dramatic re-design of Rand McNallys 2001 Road Atlas, Landor has refreshed the products look and feel for the 2002 editions. Building on the success of the 2001 editions, Landor retained a number of design elements for the new look and feel, particularly the human element. A single, large image of leisure travelers including families, couples, retirees and groups of young adults is featured on each atlas, emphasizing the fun of the journey rather than just the destination itself. The bold color designations for each of the seven different atlases was also retained. The typography was revised to give the atlases a fresher look and the word "atlas" is now featured large on the cover.
Landors re-design of the classic American chocolate drink, Yoo-Hoo, has been awarded the Gold Medal (for the Yoo-Hoo Regular Line) in the 8th Annual Beverage Packaging Global Design Awards 2001.
Photos are available upon request.
October 1, 2001 -- Hamburg, Germany -- A leading global branding and design consultancy, Landor Associates, has completed a new brand strategy and corporate identity for one of the worlds leading manufacturers of pharmaceutical and chemical products, Merck KGaA. Due to the global expansion of the Germany-based Merck, the company will also launch EMD as a new umbrella brand for the North American market. EMD stands for "Emanuel Merck, Darmstadt" Emanuel Merck was the founder of the company, which is headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany.
Landor had worked with Merck for the last year on a broad strategic brand project. Based on Landor's comprehensive Brand Asset Valuator™ research, a new brand platform was developed to solve two key challenges: differentiation from US Merck & Co., and establishment of a clear and relevant positioning for the brand.
Landor recommended leveraging Merck's unique position as one of the founding fathers of the modern pharmaceutical industry. More than 300 years old, the company remains mostly in the hands of the Merck family and has retained its pioneering role in the industry. Merck's strength as a firmly anchored partner in a volatile business promises unique value to both business partners and consumers.
A key element of the Merck branding system is the new Brand Architecture. The image of the Merck brand had become unfocused over centuries of growth and expansion into a broad spectrum of business sectors, including chemicals. Merck's new Brand Architecture re-emphasizes the core brand and simplifies the hierarchy of products within the Merck KgaA brand.
In the final phase of the project, Landor created a new visual identity for Merck and EMD, which was unveiled on October 1, 2001 at a press conference in Frankfurt. The visual development process was based on Merck's brand platform and Brand Driver™ (a proprietary Landor tool that defines the unique, central concept that powers and unites all aspects of the brand). Landor developed "166(infinity symbol)" as Merck's Brand Driver. In addition to referencing the year Merck was founded, 1668, it is also a unique symbol that communicates such ideas as tradition and generations, the pioneering spirit, courage, fascination and teamwork.
As a reminder of Merck's esteemed historical background, the "Merck Blue" used in the original visual identity now reappears in a new typeface. The color builds on the brand's equity and aids with the transition from the old to the new identity. The two new primary colors (red and orange) add a warm yet striking color component to the fresh yet stable "Merck Blue" From a brand strategy perspective, the re-design of the identity signals change and the beginning of a new era at Merck.
"Our goal was to develop a holistic brand image and a strong outward expression of Merck's new self-awareness," says Ulf-Bruen Drechsel, Managing Director, Landor Hamburg.
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as the Bayer Group, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
It's no secret to anyone working in Latin America that it's a dynamic and increasingly crowded market place full of companies competing with other local and, increasingly, global players. Even given the ups and downs of Latin American economies, global firms seeking growth opportunities keep coming into the region. You can see this dynamism when you walk down a São Paulo sidewalk, with local and foreign banks crowding the streets. And the boom isn't limited to banking or to Brazil -- you can see it throughout the region in telecommunications, airlines, fashion, cosmetics, packaged goods, beverages and a whole host of other goods and services.
Given this changing and aggressive marketplace, a growing number of senior executives in the region have chosen to use branding to compete more effectively. Regional business leaders increasingly value the way a strategic design helps convey what a brand stands for, what value it will give customers and how a brand differentiates itself from the competition.
Branding, in effect, helps answer the customer question:
"Why should I do business with you?" From the moment a customer holds your brochure, walks into your store, looks at your Web site or holds your product, he or she begins to form an opinion about your brand and its value. Is it reliable? Is it effective? Is it up to date? Is it innovative? Is it better than the others? Is it worth the price? In a world where customers have less and less time to consider options, branding helps them make a decision that often occurs in a split second.
Consequently, branding is not about aesthetics. It's about effectively communicating your value and difference to create preference and purchase.
The quickest way to demonstrate the power of branding is by example. Bradesco is the largest privately held bank in Brazil. The joke goes that upon arriving in Brazil, the Europeans built in every town square a church, a city hall and a Bradesco. Bradesco needed a new visual identity to revitalize and differentiate it in the highly crowded and competitive Brazilian banking market. Bradesco's new tree-like symbol communicates the bank's promise of strength and advanced technology. The symbol also exemplifies Bradesco's solid roots, its stability and security -- as well as its future growth.
Impsat, an Argentina-based bandwidth and Internet access provider active throughout Latin America, needed to create a highly differentiated corporate identity with impact. Its new identity transcends the often staid and monolithic appearance of typical brands in this industry. At first glance, it seems like a new, stylized typeface but, on further exposure, the letters are actually made up of symbols and numbers. The "i" is a one, the "m" is a three, and the "s" is a two. Thus, the identity is "all about data" to reinforce Impsat's promise as a technologically advanced and innovative data access company.
A clear and compelling brand promise consistently communicated at all points of touch is the principle benefit of branding. However, another benefit can be its effect on an organization. A branding program forces a company's leaders to spend time thinking about strategic issues: the company's vision, goals, values and commitment to customers and employees. A corporate branding program allows strategic conflicts and differences of opinion to be revealed, discussed and reconciled. Thus it can help refocus and unify an organization.
A new branding effort is also a perfect opportunity to get attention, to communicate and publicize the fact that business is being done differently, that people should take notice. A branding program can be used to announce an acquisition, merger or divestiture as well as a change in vision, commitment, strategy or positioning. This news can be relevant and motivating to many audiences: the financial community, the investing public, government agencies, dealers, distributors, the press, the general public and of course, current and prospective customers. A branding program can even be a way to generate employee pride, boost morale and improve recruitment.
I believe the battle for customers in Latin America will not get any easier. During Carnival this year in Rio, for example, local and foreign giants struggled for consumers' share of thirst: Ambev, one of the world's largest breweries and a Brazil native, took on Coca-Cola, the world's largest soft-drink maker, based in the US. Both are offering a guarana-based drink to local Brazilian consumers. The competition was so intense it made front page news.
Market dynamics will inevitably change. We're already seeing the growth of generic products in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, and this could spread to other sectors. But Latin markets are clearly poised for significant growth, and this can only breed stronger competition. Smart, strategic branding will be at the heart of this evolution and those who manage it best will dominate local and regional markets.
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This article was first published in Latin CEO (August 2001).
A unique exhibition, designed by Landor Associates for the IWA 2001 Berlin World Water Congress (15-18 October), provides the opportunity for leading European multi-utility provider RWE to present its vision for the future of its international water business led by Thames Water.
Water has become one of RWE's core businesses since its acquisition of Thames Water in 2000 and its more recent September 2001 announcement to acquire American Water, the largest publicly owned US water company. These strategic acquisitions dovetail into RWE's vision to bundle all its services - electricity, gas, water and waste-management service - under the slogan "one group, multi utilities".
The four-day event attracts key audiences from the water industry around the world - from environmentalists and lobbyists to business consumers and government bodies.
In addition to the 120 square meter exhibition stand, Thames Water will be co-sponsoring the Governing Mayor of Berlin's opening night gala for the conference.
As the conference will be attended by the same delegates every day, a key challenge was to create an exhibition that visually communicates the Thames Water vision and brand messages while retaining an excitement and freshness that encourages delegates to return to the stand on a daily basis.
Landor's solution was to create an installation-style exhibition that changes themes on each of the four days of the conference, emphasising on how water affects us as individuals.
Highlights over the four days include: The 15m wide X 6m high back wall is a stunning illumination of Thames Water's global presence. A world map is constructed with in excess of 1,300 glasses filled with water. Clear water represents water masses, pale blue coloured water represents land masses and dark blue coloured water represents those areas influenced by Thames Water.
Sandy Henney, Thames Water's Director of Corporate Affairs, says: "With 3,000 delegates expected to attend the Congress, we want to get people's attention. By changing the look of our stand every day, we hope that people will make a return visit to explore new aspects of Thames Water. I am delighted with the design of the stand, which is innovative and eye-catching. It is different from anything we have done before, and makes a bold statement about our global vision and our confidence."
For further information, please contact:
Stephanie Brown
Landor Associates
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7880 8316
San Francisco — October 24, 2001 — Landor Associates, one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies, has helped Charles Schwab refocus its brand with a new visual identity system. The identity consists of a wordmark and visual brand vocabulary, together conveying the personal story behind the Charles Schwab name and the brand's promise of personalized client service. The identity builds on the company's unbiased and uncomplicated approach to investment services.
Landor first identified the brand's core attributes. This set the stage for creative development of a wordmark, supporting visuals and a brand voice, which together deliver the message of personalized investment advice. Several brand touchpoints, ranging from environmental graphics in retail branches to print collateral and investment specialists' business cards, will soon showcase the new identity. The brand's look and feel will be extended in 2002 to consumer Web sites, sales collateral and corporate communications.
"Landor's expertise in working on big brands and developing well organized and thought-out systems that allow the identity to be implemented consistently is what really set them apart," said Jack Calhoun, Charles Schwab's senior vice president of advertising and brand management "They got right to the heart of our brand and expressed it perfectly, and they have partnered very effectively with us and our other agencies."
The identity adds a sense of elegance and strength to the expression of a trusted brand, affirming Charles Schwab as the company of choice with both their core investors as well as a more affluent audience with different needs. The two elements that create the wordmark represent the relationship between the person and the institution that share the name "Charles Schwab." The first name appears in gray lowercase italics, making it personal and approachable. It contrasts with the last name, which appears in black block capitals, symbolizing the strength and heritage of a premier, full-service broker.
To complement the new wordmark, Landor also developed a visual vocabulary, including imagery, color and typography, that ensures brand recognition across a variety of applications. A new photography style reinforces the brand's positioning by emphasizing the relationship between Charles Schwab and its clients. Strong, simple black-and-white photos of clients and Investment Specialists give a sense of the firm's personal character and values.
The value of Charles Schwab's decision to refocus its brand on more personalized connections with customers is underscored by Landor's 2001 Global ImagePower survey, which found that many financial service brands are currently perceived as distant and overly institutional.
"Charles Schwab has built its company and its brand by helping clients become more confident investors," said Craig Branigan, Landor's president and chief operating officer. "This new identity builds on that history and positions Charles Schwab to attract the attention of a new, more relationship-driven market."
About Landor
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. Landor takes a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors. Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 888 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
About Charles Schwab
The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE:SCH), through Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (member SIPC/NYSE), U.S. Trust Corporation, CyberTrader, Inc. and its other operating subsidiaries, is one of the nation's largest financial services firms, serving investors through branch offices, regional client telephone service centers and automated telephonic and online channels. The Charles Schwab, U.S. Trust and CyberTrader Web sites can be reached at www.schwab.com, www.ustrust.com and www.cybertrader.com, respectively.
Contacts:
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Telephone: +1 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
Glen Mathison
Charles Schwab
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Telephone: +1 415 636 5448
Landor has redesigned Microsoft’s Mactopia site to incorporate the new look and feel Landor established for the Office:Mac V.X. The new site is clean, sophisticated and fresh, and speaks to the Mac audience. Our goals were to establish credibility and trust, create excitement about the product and extend the experience of the product and brand to the site. The primary audience includes Mac OS X enthusiasts, Office 2001/98 upgraders, as well as small- and large-business users. Landor was given the project based on its well-established relationship with Microsoft.
View the Web site at: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/
A unique exhibit — designed by Landor for the IWA 2001 Berlin World Water Congress (15-18 October) — provided an opportunity for leading European multi-utility provider RWE to present its vision for the future of its international water business, led by Thames Water. Landor created an installation-style exhibition that changed themes on each of the four days of the conference, with emphasis on how water affects us as individuals. The themes included globalism, partnership, the future and opportunities for involvement. The centerpiece of the exhibit was a world map constructed with more than 1,300 glasses filled with water. Clear water represented water masses, pale-blue coloured water represented land masses and dark-blue coloured water represented those areas influenced by Thames Water.
Click to view the full press release.
Landor has helped Charles Schwab refocus its brand by developing a new visual identity system. The identity consists of a wordmark and visual brand vocabulary, together conveying the personal story behind the Charles Schwab name and the brand’s promise of personalized client service. The identity builds on the company’s unbiased and uncomplicated approach to investment services.
Several brand touchpoints, ranging from environmental graphics in retail branches to print collateral and investment specialists’ business cards, will soon showcase the new identity. The brand’s look and feel will be extended in 2002 to consumer Web sites, sales collateral and corporate communications.
Click to view the full press release.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Telephone: 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
November 28, 2001 -- Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies, has completed a new corporate identity program for Singapore Bus Services, reflecting its new status as a multimodal transit system. Landor was appointed by Singapore Bus Services to develop a new branding strategy, name, identity and overall brand expression that would effectively mirror the company’s new direction.
Singapore Bus Services has been renamed SBS Transit, reflecting its evolution from solely a bus services operator to a provider of multiple transportation services, including both MRT and LRT*. With the strong heritage and goodwill attached to SBS, the name remains an inseparable part of the new identity.
"The challenge was to translate the heritage and positive equities of the organization into a new name and identity which would describe its new offerings and reflect a contemporary and world-class transport company," explained Michael Ip, Landor’s Managing Director (Asia Pacific).
Mr. Eric Cheung, Design Director at Landor, describes the core essence of the SBS Transit brand as "Seamless Networking," which goes beyond just moving people from point to point by allowing commuters to travel with ease across different modes of transport. The goal of SBS is to bring people and communities closer together.
The corporate signature is designed to express the dynamic and confident nature of the company. These attributes are expressed through a distinctly crafted letter "T," for transit, and a graphic device called the "Speed Stroke" placed above the wordmark. The corporate colors were chosen based on their distinctiveness within the industry.
The most powerful application of the SBS Transit brand is its livery design, which expresses the brand’s promise to provide a seamless network and excellent service. The brand has also been extended across a wide range of other touch points, including signage, literature, stationery and uniforms.
The SBS Transit rebranding program signals an evolution in both the range of services the company offers as well as a change in communication style. However, "more important than these changes is the continued high-quality service delivery that commuters have come to expect from us," affirms SBS Transit Chairman Mr. Wong Hung Khim, underlining the company’s ongoing commitment to excellent service and its position as a market leader.
*- MRT (North East Line) and LRT services to commence 2002.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, brand valuation, research, internal branding, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR.
Singapore Bus Services Limited (SBS) was formed in 1973 and has been the main bus services provider in Singapore since that time, operating more than 250,000 passenger trips daily.
In May 1999, SBS was awarded the operation and maintenance contract of the North-East MRT line and the supporting LRT lines. With the inclusion of these new services, SBS expanded from a bus services operator to a multimodal transport provider.
Michael Ip
Managing Director Asia Pacific
Telephone: (852) 2114-8188
michael_ip@hk.landor.com
Ebrahim Kazi
Branding Consultant
Telephone: (65) 331-5254
ebrahim_kazi@sg.landor.com
San Francisco — December 18, 2001 — In the face of a challenging economy, companies will increasingly focus on brand valuation tools to quantify and estimate the economic contributions of brands across a portfolio, according to Landor Associates. This is one of a handful of branding trends that Landor, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies, predicts will drive consumer and marketing behavior in 2002.
"Savvy CEOs and brand managers are increasingly realizing that core brands have a measurable value as a company asset and deliver results to the bottom line," said Craig Branigan, president and chief operating officer of Landor Associates. "With the increased pressure on internal resources and marketing budgets brought on by current economic conditions, the ability to accurately measure the value of a brand will be more important than ever during the coming year. We also see more and more companies joining the race to provide accurate financial models in this area"
In addition to emphasizing brand value, Landor predicts that industry leaders will leverage personnel assets, shift efforts to demand-side branding, and seek greater personalization with customers. Companies further focusing on brands that offer comfort and security to consumers will find a receptive marketplace in 2002.
Finally, the economic downturn offers an excellent opportunity for companies to gain market share by aggressively marketing their brands and delivering on core promises. Despite reduced manpower and marketing budgets, successful category leaders will implement aggressive marketing and brand building strategies to increase market share. Since financial analysts predict that the rebound is expected to be as swift as the economic drop, companies that want to aggressively build their brand are ramping up efforts during fourth quarter 2001 and will likely begin 2002 marketing efforts at full tilt.
Brand Valuation – Financial institutions have always demanded that companies place a dollar amount on commodities. Now, brand managers must work with financial managers to determine the value of a company’s most valuable intangible asset, its brand. Leading companies are assessing the current state of each brand’s positioning and assigning value estimates to determine the relative economic contributions of brands across the enterprise’s portfolio.
Personnel Assets – While companies are struggling to maintain profitability by furloughing workers to cut costs, industry leaders are counting their employees as critical assets for long-term survival rather than as capital equipment. This is a first start toward building a powerhouse brand; the next will have leading companies focusing internally and encouraging employees to "live the brand" This approach builds a cohesive environment to enrich the corporate culture, resulting in positive impact on the bottom line. By giving employees the unique opportunity to become a strategic partner and contribute to the brand identity, companies create an environment that represents the corporate mission and values.
Focus on Comfort – Companies that demonstrate a heightened awareness of consumer needs will gain greater acceptance. With Americans facing a down economy and domestic terrorism, cutting-edge product offerings will face a tougher time in the current marketplace. Consumers will move increasingly toward brands that represent safety and comfort as part of their core brand strategy.
Demand-Side Branding – As we enter into a no-grow market, successful brands will come from those companies focused on fulfilling the demands and needs of customers. In the past, companies have nurtured a sell-side environment by creating products for which they determined there was a need. This dated strategy, steadily losing ground, can be summarized as "If we build it, customers will buy it" Today’s consumers are far more savvy and in touch with their varied and specific needs and they will increasingly expect brands to adapt in order to accommodate their lifestyles.
Personalized Relationships – In the age of the "New Economy," companies claimed to offer a level of personalized relationships that had never been seen before. Now that the Internet age has lost its luster and become status quo, companies will have to assess which strategies work and which do not. Successful companies will know who key customers are and how they feel about a particular brand. Rather than rely on partnerships and collaborations to grow market share, a leadership brand will strive to cultivate its own personalized relationship with consumers with an end result of bringing value to consumers’ lives.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. Landor takes a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 888 2LANDOR or visit www.landor.com.
Kira Storch
Cohn & Wolfe
Tel: 415 477 4546
kira_storch@cohnwolfe.com
January 11, 2002 – Hong Kong – Landor Associates, one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies, was appointed by VTech to develop a new brand strategy, identity and overall brand expression to convey the company’s new direction. "Our challenge was to effectively integrate the heritage and positive equities of the VTech organization with its new, forward-thinking business strategy to communicate a more contemporary, consumer-focused electronics corporation," said Eric Cheung, Design Director, Landor Associates.
The newly designed VTech wordmark and visual identity system are the result of more than a year’s effort by VTech and Landor to embody the company’s core values: innovation, quality, value, reliability, practicality and style. The new wordmark builds on the original design of the "V," for Vision, and "Tech," abbreviating Technology, to symbolize how VTech enhances consumers’ lives by providing them with electronics tools that perform beyond expectation. Innovation Beyond Technology, the Brand Driver™ created by Landor, expresses VTech’s commitment to carry technology beyond mere updates into genuine breakthroughs.
The new identity features custom-designed lettering forming the wordmark "vtech." This new typography style strikes a balance between curved and straight lines, breaking away from traditional aesthetics in type treatment. The highlighted "v" evokes innovation, connection and ongoing evolution – in keeping with the brand essence and the role VTech plays for its customers, now and into the future.
VTech Blue, the corporate color, was kept as a reminder of the company’s esteemed heritage. It is now complemented and enriched by a palette of vibrant and warm colors that infuse a sense of softness and friendliness, and act as the foundation of a bold, contemporary graphic system that supports the new identity.
"Launching a new corporate identity system is fundamental to the new direction of our company," said Allan Wong, Chairman and CEO of VTech Holdings Ltd. "This initiative goes far beyond a new wordmark and a new look for our brand. We are sending a clear message that VTech is transforming itself into a more marketing-oriented corporation, supported by our core competencies in product innovation and cost-effective manufacturing."
"Our new corporate identity system reflects the 25-year evolution of VTech," Allan Wong said. "Just as children grow to adults, VTech is maturing, evolving and staying in step with our customers. Whether they are enjoying telecommunication or electronic learning products, VTech will continue to provide our customers with products that are affordable, creative, practical and constantly performing beyond their expectations."
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading brand consulting firms with more than 20 offices worldwide, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney in the Asia-Pacific region. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, brand valuation, research, internal branding, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor's unrivaled client portfolio includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR.
VTech is a leading consumer-focused technology company. It designs, manufactures, markets and sells electronic learning and telecommunication products through its extensive international distribution network. Backed by its excellence in technology manufacturing, the group also engages in contract manufacturing services. With an annual turnover of more than US$1.3 billion, VTech currently has operations in 13 countries. The group invested more than US$66 million in research and development in FY2001 and launches more than 80 innovative and high-quality products each year.
Issued by Landor Associates.
Michael Ip
Managing Director Asia Pacific
Telephone: 852 2114 8188
michael_ip@hk.landor.com
Eric Cheung
Design Director
Telephone: 852 2114 8103
eric_cheung@hk.landor.com
Marketing Magazine, the foremost client-facing marketing publication in Britain, named Landor Associates as Design Agency of the Year in December 2001. Landor was recognized for its 60-year history of developing powerful brand strategy and design for products and corporations around the world. Among the high-profile and successful branding programs recently completed by Landor are BP, Accenture, bmi british midland and Alpharma.
After completing an extensive identity revitalization project for KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), Landor redesigned the organization’s Web site.
Founded in 1994, KIPP’s mission is to provide educationally disadvantaged students with the knowledge, skills and character needed to succeed in top-quality high schools and colleges as well as in the competitive world beyond. The goal of the KIPP Web site redesign was to create a comprehensive, organized and easily accessible site for prospective teachers, school administrators and interested community leaders while incorporating the look and feel of the new KIPP brand identity.
Landor’s solution for the site communicates the organization’s mission and its personality. Each page is fresh and inviting. The use of the "prompt" symbol and KIPP’s unique "life lessons" unifies the site and connects its elements to the identity system as a whole. These "life lessons" are an inspiration to KIPP teachers, staff and, most importantly, students. Incorporating them into the brand identity and the Web site captures KIPP’s spirit.
Visit the new Web site at www.kipp.org
Landor has partnered with the University of Washington Business School to develop a new brand strategy and visual identity. The new strategic platform leverages the unique opportunities provided by the university’s Pacific Northwest location, its leading-edge business environment and its innovative academic approach.
The incorporation of the color purple in the new visual identity leverages the University of Washington’s brand equity and its prestigious research reputation. The key visual element is a dynamic symbol of "synergy" that speaks directly to the new positioning platform, which focuses on the ideas of "active collaboration" and "pushing boundaries."
The new brand will be extended to Web sites, sales collateral and communications in 2002.
Artwork is available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, brand valuation, internal branding, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR.
Marketing Magazine, the foremost client-facing marketing publication in Britain, named Landor Associates as Design Agency of the Year in December 2001. Landor was recognized for its 60-year history of developing powerful brand strategy and design for products and corporations around the world.
Among the high-profile and successful branding programs recently completed by Landor London are BP, Accenture, bmi british midland and Alpharma.
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Stephanie Brown
Landor London
Communications Manager
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7880 8316
Facsimile: +44 (0)20 7880 8449
stephanie_brown@uk.landor.com
From time to time, Landor partners with other leading companies to deliver extraordinary value-added services to clients.
Economic Modeling and Financial Valuation
Hong Kong — February 5, 2001 — Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies, has developed a new brand positioning and corporate identity for The Bank of East Asia – Hong Kong’s largest independent Chinese bank. The new brand was given a soft launch on February 5th at the Bank’s annual results announcement.
The new branding program was undertaken to achieve three (3) primary objectives:
Landor’s work began with a comprehensive research and analysis study that discovered many positive equities to leverage in formulating the Bank’s new positioning, including a loyal customer base and a history of expertise. Established in 1918, The Bank of East Asia has long been a pillar of Hong Kong’s banking industry with total assets of HK$182 billion (US$23.3 billion). The Bank is perceived as an integral part of the local community and has also gained international recognition as a professionally managed and prudent financial institution.
"The strategic positioning centred on the Bank’s ‘world of experience,’ emphasising the enterprise’s successful history, along with its regional and global reach," explains Michael Ip, Managing Director of Landor Hong Kong. This strategy reflects The Bank of East Asia’s expanded business operations and retail network, while conveying the Bank’s commitment to providing unparalleled service to its customers. In addition, Landor recommended shortening the brand name to "BEA" due to its high level of awareness. "The visual manifestation of the positioning was achieved through a modernisation of the existing identity and a contemporary collateral and retail design system," adds Vincenzo Perri, Creative Director of Landor Hong Kong. The new identity consists of a redrawn globe icon, emphasising the Bank’s scale of operations, and a customised typography for the bilingual signature. The inviting design system will be rolled-out over the next month, culminating in the official launch of the redesigned BEA retail branch.
Overall, the re-branding program with Landor is seen as a critical component in defining the future direction for BEA, as expressed by Dr. David K.P. Li, Chairman and Chief Executive. "The new BEA identity retains a sense of our heritage and tradition — highlighting our Bank’s Chinese roots — while signalling the dynamism and forward-looking spirit of BEA."
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, brand valuation, research, internal branding, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices including Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney in the Asia-Pacific region. Our unrivaled client portfolio includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors. In Asia-Pacific, Landor’s client list includes Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, SingTel, LG Group, Singapore Exchange, Hang Seng Bank, DBS Bank, Singapore Technologies, Proton and Hong Kong Telecom, to name a few.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
Issued by Landor Associates. For further information, please contact the following Landor representatives or visit our Web site at www.landor.com.
Michael Ip
Managing Director, Landor Asia Pacific
Telephone: (852) 2114 8188
michael_ip@hk.landor.com
David Carlos
Head of Marketing
Landor Asia Pacific
Telephone: (852) 2114 8131
david_carlos@hk.landor.com
Based on its experience branding the Olympic Games (Atlanta in 1996 and Nagano in 1998), Landor was selected by the Salt Lake Olympics Organizing Committee to develop a unique visual identity for the 2002 Winter Games. Known as the Sun Crystal, the emblem features the contrast of mountain snow and desert sun – a theme unique to the American Southwest. It also unites ancient and modern symbols, celebrating the different cultures and traditions that come together in the Olympics.
Subsequently, the United States Olympic Committee asked Landor to develop a brand identity for the US Olympic Team uniforms in order to visually unify the teams. In creating this new identity, Landor refined the Sun Crystal concepts to their most striking essence. The simple, elegant solution unifies the hundreds of sports and thousands of athletes that make up the US Olympic Team.
Artwork is available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, brand valuation, research, internal branding, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental, internal and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Issued by Landor Associates.
For further information please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR, visit www.landor.com or contact one of the following Landor representatives.
Contacts
February 19, 2002 — San Francisco — The rebranding of the second largest opera company in North America is a triumph for both San Francisco Opera and for the opera community at large. Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies, has developed a new brand strategy and visual identity to reinvent the way people experience San Francisco Opera.
Performing arts organizations face a major challenge: After promoting the productions they stage, they often fail to create a distinctive personality that characterizes their own institutions. As a result, great institutions like San Francisco Opera have been unable to connect with their audience between productions or to deliver a consistent brand experience.
In order to transform San Francisco Opera from a name and a place into a memorable and distinctive experience, Landor developed a powerful brand strategy. The new positioning was designed to communicate the emotional depth and unique artistic approach of San Francisco Opera. This strategy was not to downplay the operatic productions, but to provide them with a meaningful and consistent backdrop — the San Francisco Opera brand — that audiences would come to recognize and embrace.
The goal of San Francisco Opera is to challenge itself, its audience and the operatic works it stages. For this reason, its signature — like its productions — is open to interpretation. The signature "OPERA" can be seen as a spotlight, a rising curtain, or even a voice building to crescendo. It avoids direct reference to the city of San Francisco, placing the emphasis on the art form. Like the productions they stage, this departure from the expected positions San Francisco Opera as a leader within the world’s opera community.
To communicate opera’s mercurial spirit, Landor designed a signature red bird that highlights San Francisco Opera’s most adventurous productions. The red bird serves as a symbol of San Francisco Opera’s commitment to finding new directions, new sources of inspiration and new voices. Sometimes playful, sometimes menacing, each bird is hand-drawn for a specific application.
The new visual expression will reinforce the branded experience by appearing on all of San Francisco Opera’s communications — the subscription brochure, tickets, Web site, print advertisements, DVDs and much more.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, brand valuation, research, internal branding, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For further information please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR, visit www.landor.com or contact one of the following Landor representatives.
San Francisco — February 8, 2002 — Facing unprecedented competition from professional sports for fans and sponsorships, the Salt Lake Olympic Committee needed a powerful, unifying brand for the 2002 Winter Games. Based on its unrivaled list of credentials in sports branding — including the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, 1998 Nagano Olympics, U.S. Open and the New Jersey Nets — Landor was chosen to develop a brand identity for this global sporting event. Landor was also asked to create a brand identity for the U.S. Olympic Team's opening ceremony and competition uniforms.
Landor's challenge was to develop themes that both boldly represent Salt Lake and resonate with audiences worldwide. Four ideas arose as clear winners — contrast, culture, courage and celebration. These four themes became the basis for everything from the 2002 Olympic symbol and mascots to the Games' distinctive colors and graphics.
"The challenge when branding a recurring, global event is to imbue it with a sense of time and place" says Margaret Youngblood, Executive Creative Director at Landor. "The Sun Crystal mark mimics the look of Salt Lake City and captures the spirit of the games in a visual language that is recognized around the world."
The emblem features the contrast of mountain snow and desert sun — a theme unique to the American Southwest. The 2002 logo also unites ancient and modern symbols, celebrating the different cultures and traditions that come together in the Olympics.
When it came time to give the U.S. Olympic Team its own look, Landor refined these ideas to their most striking essence. This simple, elegant solution unifies the hundreds of sports and thousands of athletes that make up the U.S. Olympic Team.
Landor Associates is one of the world's leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, brand valuation, research, internal branding, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively. Landor has a global network of 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Air Lines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world. For further information please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR, visit www.landor.com or contact the following Landor representatives.
February 26, 2002 — San Francisco — Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies, today unveiled a new service that enables companies for the first time to accurately quantify the value of their brands via a credible, objective financial methodology.
Specifically, the service permits clients to determine the following: - Current and future brand value in dollar terms - Brand strengths and weaknesses, and how they influence choices - Appropriateness and value of brand expansion into other markets - Strategy for maximizing brand strength in the future
"We can tell CEOs in the clearest terms what their brands are worth, what drives that value, and what actions they should take to capitalize on their brands," said Clay Timon, chairman and chief executive officer, Landor Associates. "BrandEconomics™ is the most rigorous approach to measuring the true economic value of those brands available today."
The methodology is the product of a two-year collaboration between Stern Stewart & Co., a global consulting company, and Landor’s parent company Young & Rubicam, Inc. The partnership has resulted in the development of a new company, BrandEconomics LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary under Stern Stewart that will be responsible for delivering the service. Landor worked with Stern Stewart in the creation of the name, logo and corporate identity. The partnership with BrandEconomics enables Landor to situate its branding advice within its business context and to support the management of the brand as an economic asset. By partnering with BrandEconomics, Landor ensures that research conducted on behalf of its clients remains objective and impartial.
"For the first time, corporations have access to a fact-based, quantitative approach to brand management and strategy that combines the rigor of management consulting with the insight of a creative agency," said Mich Bergesen, president and chief executive officer, BrandEconomics. "In a knowledge economy, innovation, brand strength and human capital, rather than physical assets, are the key sources of value."
Brand owners and industry experts regularly voice two reservations concerning brand valuation techniques. First, many approaches produce values that vary tremendously from period to period, often heavily influenced by near-term changes in investor perceptions as reflected in stock prices. This volatility often runs counter to a brand’s consistently strong consumer franchise and sustained market positioning, causing managers to question the credibility of valuations.
Second, current techniques rely on subjective opinions about the role of branding in driving business performance, producing values that are not transparently linked to those drivers that managers can influence. Even if these produce reasonable valuations for brands, they fail to improve managers’ understanding of how to manage the brands for the future.
The two key advantages of the BrandEconomics approach are the use of objective input metrics and its transparency in linking the metrics of brand health to superior economic performance.
BrandEconomics uses two leading analytical techniques for financial and brand profiling:
A comprehensive overview of the BrandEconomics methodology, research findings, conclusions and case studies are available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, research, brand valuation, internal branding, design, naming, packaging, as well as environmental and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
Landor has a global network of more than 20 offices and an unrivaled client portfolio that includes such names as FedEx, Morgan Stanley, NYSE, Microsoft, BP, Delta Airlines, The Olympic Games, Alamo, Cathay Pacific, Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, France Telecom, VARIG and Coors.
Landor is part of Young & Rubicam Inc., which has 340 offices in 73 countries worldwide. Young & Rubicam is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest advertising and marketing services groups in the world.
For more information about Landor, please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR, visit www.landor.com or contact one of the following Landor representatives.
Stern Stewart & Co. is a global consulting firm that specializes in helping client companies in the measurement and creation of shareholder wealth through the application of tools based on modern financial theory. The company pioneered the development of its proprietary EVA® (Economic Value Added) framework, which offers a consistent approach to setting goals and measuring performance, communicating with investors, evaluating strategies, allocating capital, valuing acquisitions, and determining incentive bonuses that make managers think like owners. More than 300 client companies worldwide now use EVA, and evidence shows that most of them significantly outperform other companies in their industries.
Established in 1982 by Joel M. Stern and G. Bennett Stewart III, Stern Stewart has grown rapidly over the past decade, and now has offices in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and South Africa.
Contacts
Landor has partnered with BrandEconomics – a new subsidiary of leading financial consulting company Stern Stewart – to develop a robust new brand-valuation model. BrandEconomics™ provides objective financial evidence to identify the brands in a portfolio that should receive the greatest investment. The data can also be used to predict the extendibility of a brand into new product categories, the impact of alternative repositioning strategies on a brand's value and its ability to command premium prices. BrandEconomics utilizes two powerful methodologies to create quantifiable data. The first component is Young & Rubicam's Brand Asset Valuator (BAV®), which is the world’s largest database of consumer attitudes towards individual brands. Originally created by Landor Associates in 1993, the database includes more than 20,000 brands in over 40 countries. The second component of BrandEconomics is Stern Stewart’s Economic Value Added (EVA®) valuation tool, which enables companies to identify sources of superior performance at the company and sector levels. By combining the brand health data of BAV and the financial performance data of EVA, BrandEconomics is able to quantify the past, present and future performance of brands – information that can better inform all brand-related decisions. Additionally, Landor developed the name and visual identity for BrandEconomics.
For more information on BrandEconomics and for the full press release, please contact Britt Dionne (contact information included below).
Nicholas Russell has joined Landor as Senior Director of Internal Branding and Peter Wise has been promoted to General Manager of Landor’s Irvine office.
"The addition of Nicholas and Peter to Landor demonstrates our commitment to continuously expanding and improving our offering to clients," said Craig Branigan, President of Landor Associates.
Nicholas Russell, Senior Director of Internal Branding for Landor’s Strategic Services Group joined from Interbrand where he led their Internal Brand Alignment practice. With more than thirteen years of consulting experience in organizational design and change management, Nicholas will be responsible for developing and driving client programs that speak to improving bottom-line growth and increasing brand value by aligning organizational structures and cultures with brand vision, values and image. The resulting brand–aligned employee behavior greatly enhances a company’s ability to deliver its unique brand promise consistently to its customers.
Peter Wise has been promoted to General Manager of Landor’s Irvine office. He brings more than fifteen years of branding experience to Landor clients. Prior to this new position, Peter had been at Landor for four years, helping clients such as FedEx, Bradesco and Bradesco Seguros, and The Ford Motor Company build leadership brands. Peter will be responsible for overseeing Landor’s ongoing relationship with Lincoln Mercury as well as continuing to grow Landor’s presence in the Southern California market.
In order to transform San Francisco Opera from a name and a place into a memorable and distinctive experience, Landor developed a powerful brand strategy. The new positioning was designed to communicate the emotional depth and unique artistic approach of San Francisco Opera. This strategy was not to downplay the operatic productions, but to provide them with a meaningful and consistent backdrop — the San Francisco Opera brand — that audiences would come to recognize and embrace.
The goal of San Francisco Opera is to challenge itself, its audience and the operatic works it stages. For this reason, its signature — like its productions — is open to interpretation. The signature "OPERA" can be seen as a spotlight, a rising curtain, or even a voice building to crescendo. It avoids direct reference to the city of San Francisco, placing the emphasis on the art form. Like the productions they stage, this departure from the expected positions San Francisco Opera as a leader within the world’s opera community.
To communicate opera’s mercurial spirit, Landor designed a signature red bird that highlights San Francisco Opera’s most adventurous productions. The red bird serves as a symbol of San Francisco Opera’s commitment to finding new directions, new sources of inspiration and new voices. Sometimes playful, sometimes menacing, each bird is hand-drawn for a specific application.
The new visual expression will reinforce the branded experience by appearing on all of San Francisco Opera’s communications — the subscription brochure, tickets, Web site, print advertisements, DVDs and much more.
Artwork is available upon request.
Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding and design consultancies. Founded in 1941, Landor pioneered many of the research, design and brand consulting methodologies that are now standard in the global branding industry. We take a holistic approach to brand creation and management using strategic insight, brand valuation, research, internal branding, research, design, naming and packaging, as well as environmental, internal and digital branding to help companies build Breakaway Brands™ and communicate with their audiences more effectively.
For further information please call 1 (888) 2LANDOR, visit www.landor.com or contact one of the following Landor representatives.
March 1, 2002 -- London -- Landor London has created the packaging and look and feel for Walkers’ Sensations - a new mainstream premium crisp range. The product - specially prepared crunchier crisps in a range of five indulgent flavours: oven-roasted chicken and thyme; Thai sweet chilli; sea salt and malt vinegar; four cheese and red onion; and sea salt and cracked black pepper - will be available on-shelf from mid-March 2002.
This is Walkers’ first foray in marketing mainstream premium snacks and it will be Walkers biggest brand launch since Doritos in 1994, supported by an advertising campaign by Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO starring Gary Lineker and Victoria Beckham.
Sensations is aimed at adult snackers - primarily 25-45 year old parents with young kids. This brand is all about coming home from work, relaxing in front of the television or with friends and unwinding with a bottle of wine and a pack of Sensations. In introducing a range like Sensations, Walkers recognises the fundamental shift in people’s eating habits in the UK and acknowledges their aspirations for better quality fresh ingredients.
The packaging is a radical departure from established Walkers packaging, reflecting the unique nature of this new range. The new Sensations brand identity is the hero - it is endorsed by the Walkers banner that supports cues of quality and freshness. The use of ingredients photography on pack, extremely rare within the savoury snacks category, is by world-famous food photographer David Loftus. It combines the idea of the finest quality ingredients with the best of the world’s flavours.
Sensations’ recommended retail price is £1.29 per 150g bag and will also be available in a smaller 40g size. True to its mainstream premium positioning, it will only be 20% higher in price than a normal Walkers Crisps large bag.
Nikki Burgess, Brand Manager for Evening Snacking at Walkers, says: "I believe that it’s the packaging that will be a key differentiator of Sensations from the competition - it is so fresh and stylish and there’s nothing on the market that compares. Landor’s breadth and depth of creative expertise in packaging design has been a vital part of the marketing mix."
Derek Johnston, Creative Director at Landor, says: "There was a desire to bring a deeper level of considered and stylish design to highly commoditised product packaging such as Sensations. People’s homes and lives are increasingly stylish and contemporary and our creative execution reflects this."
Landor has worked with Walkers as their brand design consultancy for the last 6 years, across the entire brand portfolio, including such favourites as Walkers Crisps, Doritos, Max, Monster Munch, Lites, Quavers and Square.
For further information, please contact:
Stephanie Brown
Landor London
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7880 8316
stephanie_brown@uk.landor.com
Everyone's doing it
Pick up any newspaper these days, and more than likely, you'll read yet another story--if not dozens--about two brands jumping into relationship mode. Not simply of the promotional "Happy Meals" variety, but of the "mating for life" sort.
"Co-branding," as it's called, is running rampant with no apparent signs of slowing, even given the cautious economic forecast. In fact, the need for overnight and innovative growth strategies seems, if anything, to have fueled its popularity. What faster way to gain critical mass, catapult into unstaked territory, or refresh a tired image, than through an instant association?
Given this profligate coupling, the questions that should be asked are, "Is faster better?" and most important, "Is a new co-branded relationship ultimately good--or bad--for the brands in play, in terms of brand equity?" Is the association a strategically sound one, strong enough to sustain time and scrutiny, or is it simply a short-sighted and potentially harmful answer to increased competitive challenges?
Perhaps a good way to sort through this co-branding mania is to think about judging the merit of a co-branding venture the way you might judge those traits that make a marriage successful. My wife once quipped that the best marriages are based on "interlocking neuroses." What I took that to mean is that the steadiest relationships are those in which both parties are allowed to maintain their individual identities, but in a way that complements and helps bring out the best in the other--all in a mutually beneficial and compatible way.
Finding the Right Partner
It's certainly a good place to start when it comes to assessing the potential co-mingling of two recognized brands. First, obviously, is self-awareness--a keen understanding of your brand's identity. You've got to know who you are and what you are known and trusted for before you can determine a natural partner. Smart brand managers also realize self-awareness allows you to know who and what you could be.
Then, for a brand marriage to succeed, each must bring those appropriate "interlockable" strengths and assets to the table, and likewise, each must be flexible enough to commit or abdicate authority in certain areas.
Most critical, each must bring complementary and interlocking end benefits to the consumer--benefits that intuitively "feel right" and work together in concert on both the rational and emotional levels. These benefits, when combined, provide increased value to the consumer and a greater degree of relevance.
After all, at the heart of all well-managed brands is a simple promise to the consumer to deliver on the expectations of what the brand stands for. Enhance this promise--and its delivery--and it's win-win. The merged brands will discover that, as a couple, they've expanded their sphere of influence and gained competitive advantage. Consumers will find, quite happily, that one plus one can actually equal three when two brands they've relied on as solo players meet their needs and desires better than ever before.
A Fruitful Relationship
By way of example, consider the successful marriage of Starbucks and Barnes & Noble. Starbucks has definitely created a well articulated brand for itself and it realizes it's about more than just coffee. It's about sociability, an experience reminiscent of the dolce vita coffee house culture--an inviting and appealing "place to be." Barnes & Noble venues, more than merely bookstores, are welcoming and social places in which to browse, to relax, to partake of a cultural experience--and now, to do so over a comforting latte. The end game: compatible user groups, complementary brand personalities, and enhanced end benefits for the consumer. They've been able to capture a market and differentiate themselves more than any of their respective competitors.
The same can be said for the pending alliance between Starbucks and Microsoft with the offering of wireless Internet access in Starbucks locations. The benefit, again, for the socially oriented, is a familiar community environment in which to access your extended community. First mover advantage--totally connected customer. (If you're thinking bigamy here, don't. The world of co-branding has a totally different and publicly accepted code of fidelity.)
Also appropriate to me are Wal-Mart and AOL: a strong marriage that exhibits an understanding of America's shopping mall culture--online and off. Another shopper's dream team: Amazon and Toys R Us. The new and the old economy together for the fast relief of harried parents everywhere. For "fuel yourself" road warriors of every age, McDonald's and Chevron make a nice match. And looking at Warner-Lambert and Celestial Seasonings, any companies that merge to ease the effects of the common cold have got to have the consumer's best interest at heart.
An example of brands that took the time to look at themselves carefully before tying the knot are Rosie O'Donnell (yes, she's a brand) and McCall's. After analysis, they recognized this was not a match bound to work. Trying to combine incompatible brand personalities can only send confusing messages to the consumer.
And perhaps the most telling example of the need to know yourself and what assets you bring to the party before you jump into a relationship is the dot-com partnership explosion that preceded the dot-com implosion. Internet speed may have its place in the new economy, but not at the expense of some solid brand architecture work. Before all of that venture capital money was spent, these brands should have spent some time defining themselves, their audience and the benefits they provided.
As the marketplace continues to challenge even the most robust players in the areas of growth, differentiation, and wallet share, it will become increasingly difficult to resist the lure of marrying for money. Remember another fundamental rule of branding: it's easier to destroy a good brand than to create one. The prizes for the winningest co-branded relationships will go to those who follow these tried and very true rules: Know who you are; know and respect who you're partnering with; and do it as much for the consumer as for yourself.
Tips for a Lasting Relationship
Whether the marriage is made in heaven or the marketplace, don't take your vows unless you know:
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This article was first published in Consumer Insight (June 2001).
The fact is, branding shouldn't stop – or even slow down – during a slowdown. Ultimately, the basis for a consumer's choices in a recession does not differ much from how he or she decides in a period of plenty. The perceived emotional and functional promises need to be more apparent and persuasive to justify the same price premium.
To see if you know what it takes to bring your brand through the storm unscathed, take this little quiz. Answer 'yes' to at least seven questions and you're headed to make it through intact. Nine or more, you'll rocket by the competition. Six or less: check your seat belt, it could be a bumpy ride in 2002.
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This article was first published in Marketing Magazine (10 January 2002).
Landor has developed a new brand signature for the pharmaceutical leader, Wyeth. Previously known as American Home Products, the corporation recently divested its agricultural products, home foods and medical-device businesses in favor of its core pharmaceuticals market. The name of its largest subsidiary, Wyeth, was subsequently adopted to reflect this evolution from a diversified holding company to a global leader in research-based pharmaceutical products.
Landor was asked to develop a visual identity that could capture this transformation and communicate Wyeth's leadership position within the pharmaceutical industry. The new signature represents leadership, stability and the innovative spirit at the core of Wyeth's new corporate mission. The wedge serifs of the letterforms are distinctive without seeming dated, building on the strong heritage of this established name.
Artwork is available upon request.
Most companies now recognize that brands are powerful marketing assets. As the world becomes increasingly complex, brands serve as familiar beacons of trust to consumers, and make their buying decisions much simpler.
However, while many companies are focused on building their individual brands, one of the biggest challenges they face is how to structure and manage their portfolio of brands - to create the right "brand architecture." Why? Brand architecture defines and orders the relationship between brands, the corporate entities and families of products and services. Ultimately, the architecture creates a system, like a road map, that helps consumers and key corporate constituents to navigate easily among brands and make the right choices.
As branding systems evolve to address more complex corporate needs, it's important for companies not to lose sight of the fundamental aim of branding - that of guiding customer choice and building lasting relationships with them. To assess whether their current brand system remains the best solution, we recommend that organizations step back and take a fresh look. This need becomes more critical as changes in the marketplace impact how companies develop and organize their portfolio of brands. Among the key drivers we see that will continue to effect changes in brand architecture:
In this article, we'll look at the two basic brand architecture models that companies traditionally use. We'll offer an assessment of their respective strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we'll introduce new models and some emerging trends in branding architecture that are offering new solutions.
Traditionally, brand architecture is comprised of two major tiers. The top tier is the corporate or parent brand. The second tier comprises the "sub-brands" - the different families of products and/or services and the divisional brands. Given these two tiers, there are two divergent models that companies have typically developed in creating and managing their brands:
While there are obvious benefits in creating powerful corporate and product brands that hold real equity with consumers, there are also limitations to the two traditional models. On the one hand, the focus on the parent brand is more efficient - as long as that parent brand is broad enough to provide a conceptual umbrella for the breadth of its products or services, and still effectively differentiate the products from its competition. On the other hand, the second model builds strong brands at the product level. However, it can be quite expensive to support.
Even if companies take a somewhat mixed strategy in building corporate and product brands, rarely is there even-handed support of both tiers, and not often are the two seen as a whole rather than separate parts. For the purposes of this article, however, let's focus on exploring the issues surrounding the two traditional models.
In the traditional model, the bulk of marketing dollars is usually spent supporting the bottom tier - a company's products and services. While this enables a company to market multiple products and services and to communicate relevant differentiation for specific brands, it becomes a problem for a company with changing products and lines. Here are three essential limitations:
In this scenario, one ballyhooed product introduction follows another. This kind of churn does little to build long-term relationships with consumers, another key to building strong, enduring brands.
The clear wisdom of investing in a strong corporate or parent brand cannot be underestimated, particularly as the marketplace becomes more global. It is obviously efficient from a marketing standpoint, enabling a company to focus on building a single powerful brand over time rather than a myriad of smaller product-based brands.
However, while once the corporate brand stood firm over the course of time, increasingly in the past quarter century, we've seen that change is constant. Thus, reliance on the corporate brand
