Tyco Electronics

New:  Independence, and logo.

Launched:  Spun out June 29, 2007, and listed on NYSE July 2

Story in brief:  Another conglomerate break-up.
In 2004, in the wake of the Dennis Kozlowski looting scandal, Tyco's new management claimed their strategy "no longer is one of growth through acquisitions but rather calls for operating a set of businesses that have some synergy" (WSJ, 6/15/04). Three years later, the spin-outs of the Tyco Electronics and Tyco Healthcare divisions suggest that synergy can go only so far. Electronics and Healthcare make more sense as  independent plays, leaving Tyco International to find greater synergy (or further spin-outs) among its remaining safety/fire and industrial equipment brands.

Unlike Tyco Healthcare, now Covidien, rather than creating something new, Electronics CEO Tom Lynch chose the naming path of least resistance (for the moment) by elevating the existing division name to corporate brand level.  So he licensed "Tyco" from Tyco Industries, accepting the risk of sharing brand control with an unrelated company. 

Given the shared name, design of yet another Tyco wordmark would make no sense (and 'Tyco Electronics' is long for a wordmark), so a symbol was warranted.  Interbrand designed a lively TE monogram that neatly evokes connection.

Credits:
C.E.O. - Tom Lynch
C.B.O - Joan Wainright, SVP Communications & Public Affairs
Identity council & design - Interbrand:
Strategy, Jennifer Meyers; Design, Daniel Sim and Curt Munger

First Impressions:
Name decision:  Generally, shared names come to be regretted; and if  Mr. Lynch is lucky, all other Tycos will in due course  spin or fade away. ( It took ITT Industries, now again ITT Corporation, only ten patient years  until it could drop 'Industries' - see Travis Engen's quote on this in my 1998 review.)  But in this case, there's better reason to accept the risk of a shared brand. On the Tyco Electronics site you'll see no sub-brands, no lingering subsidiary names; this division had already buried them, over recent years, to position itself as an integrated operating company, rather than a conglomerate's sub-portfolio. Tyco/Electronics had thus built independent equity. (Tyco Healthcare, in contrast, had continued to feature its portfolio of acquired proprietary brands, and thus now needs a more distinctive proprietary name like Covidien to begin to glue them together.)
Design strategy: Appropriate.  The choice of a TE monogram, and its restrained size, works to strengthen the presence of the otherwise long (and non-distinctive) name.
Design execution:   Electric and exciting. Nice balance of symbol to wordmark, and the symbol provides colors and forms that extend easily as visual system elements.

But I'll bet some other companies would kill for that TEL stock symbol.