Bpost

New:  Name (whether bpost or Bpost), logo and visual system

Launched:  17 June, 2010

Story in brief:
On January 1, 2011, under European law, postal services throughout Europe will lose their monopoly on delivery of letters -- the final step in their deregulation (or "liberalization").  In Belgium, the government and its postal service worked for years to toughen it up as a competitor; and this year CEO Johnny Thijs commissioned a rebranding both to consolidate and to signal a more customer-focused and competitive culture. 

Rebranding also provided the opportunity to clean up a dysfunctional name situation, by replacing three generic names ("The Post" in Flemish, French and German) –  costly and divisive, and of no use as identity outside Belgium – with simply "bpost." CEO Thijs sums up: “The new name reflects our two basic characteristics. We are and will remain a postal company, and we have and will maintain strong roots in our home market. We now also have one single name, which will differentiate us internationally” (from competitors like Germany's Deutsche Post and Netherlands' TNT Post).

The new symbol replaces a highly-abstracted crown and horn (a dynamic shape contained in a static square) with an even more abstracted horn; the crown now is effectively gone. (Where previously the symbol could stand alone, the new symbol, when it isn't in use as a supergraphic, is intended to be locked to the Bpost name.) It is intentionally a starkly more "modern" expression. To quote Inge Vervotte, Minister of Public Service and Public Enterprises, "This is the culmination of major efforts to change; all employees have worked hard to prepare the company for the future. In choosing this new name and logo, this modernized bpost turned resolutely toward the future."

Credits:
C.E.O. - Johnny Thijs
Identity counsel, naming and design - Interbrand (Amsterdam)

First Impressions:
Strategy:  An intelligent, well-timed use of rebranding by the postal service, to help refresh, toughen and protect itself against pan-European competitors.  And while Belgium itself stumbles toward separation into French and Flemish parts, it's interesting to see its postal service express a more unified and proudly Belgian attitude.
Naming: Brilliant (except for punctuation. See "Other Comments" below.)
Design:  The visual power of this rebranding comes more from aggressive applications design (the supergraphics) than from the symbol itself, now a stark, somewhat puzzling and not particularly beautiful shape (a modified swoosh? Half a target?). I suspect many Belgians may find it a bit cold, and feel pangs of loss of heritage, which should be mixed with respect for positive action.

Other Comments:
Bpost (and Interbrand) seem to expect us to treat its new name, in text, as bpost rather than Bpost. I don't believe this is either realistic or desirable. It works well in the wordmark, but wordmarks are best seen as visual rather than verbal. With good reason, proper names in text should be capitalized -- and will be, by The New York Times and many others, including Identityworks. Trying to enforce a lower-case "b" ensures only that the name will be inconsistently treated, an identity-weakening condition. But more importantly, "bpost" will forever distract and confuse readers, while trivializing Bpost in stature.