Credit Suisse

New:  Logo, and monolithic brand architecture

Launched:   June 29, 2005,
not to take effect until January 16, 2006

Story in brief:
Nine years ago, Chairman Rainer Gut led what I then called "a controlled and brilliantly executed corporate-branding exercise," to establish Credit Suisse as a modern global masterbrand while retaining its valuable First Boston investment banking equity. Mission accomplished. Then last year, Chairman Oswald Grübel approved the next and final step to monolithic branding. This could have been done simply by dropping "First Boston." Instead, advised by Enterprise IG's London team and its research, Grübel chose to rebrand again, by changing to a post-modern logo that nods to the pre-1997 First Boston ship symbol.

One could hardly ask the incumbent identity firm, Wolff Olins, to scrap its own good work; Grübel needed someone else and chose the London office of Enterprise IG. Responding to the management teams' polar range of wishes, to take pride in tradition and heritage while promoting modern dynamism, Enterprise came up with a have-your-cake positioning: "The Tradition to Innovate." Since the existing logo tilted toward "modern," a new logo would have to reverse course toward "traditional' ... in other words, post-modern. The Enterprise IG designers came up with a lightly-serif-ed, all-caps  wordmark, pulled by two foresails.

Curiously, the new design was launched publicly in June 2005, then launched again for real, six months later. Most companies try to keep their powder dry.

Credits:
C.E.O. -  Oswald J. Grübel
Identity counsel and design - Enterprise IG (UK)
 

First Impressions:
I was slow to review this: last June it wasn't real yet, but by January it felt like old news. On the other hand, we've all had six more months to mull it over, and I've heard many compliments. I can't agree.

I have no problem with the one-brand strategy; perpetuation of the First Boston tag for the investment banking unit would continue to suggest that this capability was somehow less than integral to Credit Suisse, and would inhibit more seamless teaming with the asset management and private banking businesses.

But why also change the brand, especially so radically in character? Was there so substantive a change in the company, other than that in the CEO's chair, that needed signaling?

I admit to a personal bias toward classic modernism. That  said, the 1997 logo was remarkable for its balance of  freshness and authority; it did indeed express a culture of innovation. To me the postmodern new mark suggests a weaker, more precious but less confident culture.