AkzoNobel

New:  Logo , tag line (and unified name)

Launched:  April 25, 2008

Story in brief:
Having acquired ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries PLC ), Netherlands-based AkzoNobel has become the world's largest paints and coatings company. It celebrates this achievement not by adding "ICI" to its name (for which we are grateful), but by refreshing its existing brand.  For this assignment, with admirable loyalty  management returned to Wally Olins, whose 1988 Wolff Olins team had designed Akzo's reaching man (known in the company as Bruce).  Wally's post-Wolff Olins firm is Saffron.

"This is the new AkzoNobel, " says CEO Hans Wijers. "We are one company, with a powerful new global brand" featuring "a subtle name change [to one word],  a revitalizing powerful logo and a new brand architecture.  The logo," he adds, "was already a very strong and distinctive asset, but it has been made more relevant for the 21st century and now has a greater sense of power and energy."

"Even without ICI," Wally Olins told me, "the company had wanted to bring Bruce up to date. In twenty years there'd been enormous growth; the ICI acquisition, the latest of  many, simply added urgency.  A related issue was the proliferation of powerful sub-brands, and the wish for rebalancing via a more powerful corporate presence."  Thus "new Bruce" was designed to be tougher and more assertive.

Credits:
C.E.O. - Hans Wijers
Identity counsel and logo design - Saffron (London)
Applications & visual system - Other firms including Pentagram

First Impressions:
Strategy: It very effectively expresses change, and aspirations well beyond those you would expect of a coating and specialty chemicals company.
Design: This new "Bruce" stretches the boundaries of the word "symbol"...  indeed, is it still a symbol, or has it become an illustration? Whatever we call it, it is  forceful and memorable branding.

It won't be easy, however, to implement. The 'symbol' won't reduce well and in some media the wordmark will look freestanding (as in the  fireworks display shown here); the wordmark is strong enough, indeed, to function independently and it may become tempting to use it so.

Details: The lighter-blue hand is a nice use of gradation. I'm a little uncomfortable, though, with the need to chop Bruce off at the chest (or put him behind a chest-high wall, which will look odd in some settings).

Other Comments:
Anonymous: A tribute to bald men everywhere.
 

Corporate Brand Matrix ratings:  
20% structural,  80% strategic,  0% functional