Cable & Wireless Communications

New:  Company, formal name, and logo with visual system

Launched:  March 26, 2010

Story in brief:
The March 26 "demerger" of Cable & Wireless into two surviving companies required creation of two new identities.  They agreed to share the "Cable & Wireless" (one wonders who licenses it to whom).  The company focusing on the enterprise market, serving "mission critical needs of large users of telecoms" has chosen to call itself  "Worldwide,"  while the full-service regional telecom provider in "the Caribbean, Panama, Macau and Monaco & Islands"  opted for "Communications."

While the new companies will share the C&W brand, neither will carry forward the distinctive 'blue globe' logo familiar from the mid-90s, when the Cable & Wireless "alliance of more than fifty" regional partners was the world's fifth largest telecom group.  The new "Worldwide" company has chosen a straight-type wordmark (designer TBD), while the seemingly shrunken regional telecoms group commissioned a new globe symbol from Elmwood, a UK-based brand consultancy.

Per a March 26 news release, "The new logo retains the heritage of the Cable & Wireless ‘globe’, but adds a three-dimensional aspect to its shape. The globe now comprises a series of lines, representing the company’s telecom cables. The lines stretch around the globe to form the shape of an ampersand."  CEO Tony Rice said "Our new brand identity captures the value of our heritage, while moving us to a more modern brand."

Credits:
C.E.O. - Tony Rice
Identity design - Elmwood

First Impressions:
Strategy:  The decision to share the brand is understandable, lazy, inherently unstable and potentially catastrophic.  Neither company now controls its own brand; each is hostage to the other's behavior. This will end, perhaps with a name change, more likely with a disappearance by acquisition.
Design:  The 1992 globe was a hard-edged classic (in one color, yet), another proof that a good designer can always reinvent a globe. When it was launched, CEO Lord Young said "It has impact because it is simple yet strong." He was right. For me, the new symbol is more an illustration than a mark... friendlier, perhaps, but lacking in authority.  I suspect, too, that the company's communicators will soon find their new visual system (see www.cwc.com), especially the palette, to be  unsustainably confining.

Corporate Brand Matrix ratings:  
80% structural,  20% strategic,  0% functional (est.)