Vantiv, LLC

New:  Name and visual identity

Launched:  June 15, 2011

Story in brief:
This rebranding was set in motion in 2009, when Fifth Third Bank sold a controlling interest in its Processing Solutions unit (a banking 'back room' operation, handling card and ATM transaction processing on a global basis) to Advent International, who are aggressive equity investors on a global scale. At $2.35 billion, this was one of the largest private equity transactions completed in 2009. 

In all but name, this was a spin-out. Obviously, its parental branding had become a net liability. Fifth Third is regional while Vantiv's prospective market is global (and includes banks competitive to Fifth Third). Perhaps more importantly, Vantiv operates in a dynamic, rapidly growing technology-driven sector (consider payment by smart phone) and needs a brand that supports a more dynamic culture than that of a bank. Finally, CEO Charles Drucker and his team were quietly working toward an IPO (as confirmed by July 12 Wall Street Journal reporting), for which a more forward-looking freestanding identity would be helpful.

CEO Drucker's rebranding team called in the local (Cincinnati) office of Landor Associates, which has become (I was surprised to learn) the largest office in the Landor network, thanks to product work for P&G and Kraft. (Indeed on August 1 Mary Zalla, Landor Cincinnati's president, became Landor's global president. She will continue to work from Cincinnati.). But Landor Cincinnati in turn recommended a team in its San Francisco office, for its superior corporate identity experience — strategist Bob Kersten and creative director Chris Lehmann (familiar to us for his work on Devon, Brocade and Hilton).

According to Kersten, Landor recommended a positioning which would replace "we've been spun away" dejection with a winner's attitude, active and progressive, distanced from financial services, closer to Silicon Valley than to banking.  The subsequent naming process was then straightforward and led logically to the coined word Vantiv...short, unique, with positive connotations ("advantage") and a marvelous symmetry of v's... and best of all, legally available.

With a sharp short name, who needs a symbol? Landor's early logo preference was for a wordmark, lower-casing the initial v to celebrate the v-v symmetry and give the mark a pleasing boat shape. Symbol ideas, initial cap solutions and all-cap solutions were explored too, but the client readily accepted the case for a wordmark (bolstered by examples like Microsoft, 3M and in Vantiv's space, Bloomberg).

The case for a simple wordmark was also strengthened by Landor's recommended addition of a visual system featuring a "symbol stream" of icons (product, function or market-related), to be used alone or in dynamic random patterns, plus a rich color palette featuring yellow, purple and three shades of gray. The recommended corporate font is Foundry Context, which was also the basis of the redrawn wordmark (note shorter comb-over on the a, deleted serif on the t, and enlarged tilde on the i, which relates to the icon shapes). 

Thus Vantiv is yet another example in the trend toward visual identities shaped as much or more by secondary graphic devices than by the logos themselves.

Credits:
C.E.O. - Charles Drucker
C.M.O. -
Naming & identity design - Landor SF,
strategy lead Bob Kersten, creative lead Chris Lehmann
 

First Impressions:
Strategy:
Naming:  As we all know, it's increasingly difficult to find a highly functional distinctive non-limiting name to be both available, and not too forced. Sounding vaguely like advantage, Vantiv easily passes the gag test.
Design:  Short, distinctive name? Make it the visual hero. Especially when you can encase it in two v's (lower-cased for symmetry), to give the wordmark a pleasing boat-like shape.  Make sure to give it weight, for stability, confidence and visual impact. Nice work, Landor.
 

Other Comments:
The "Fifth Third" name defines "backward-looking brand." It is the petrified celebration of a merger which took place in 1908, and it is a reliable (if juvenile) joke generator as well. (One story is that it's "Fifth Third" because "Third Fifth" might suggest inebriation.) 

Footnote:
The ascendancy of Landor's Cincinnati office restores the Landor brand, in my view, to its historic primacy ('60s-'80s) among marketing-intensive "branding" agencies, with a strong minor in corporate identity.
 

Corporate Brand Matrix ratings:  
40% structural,  55% strategic,  5% functional