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2005



1997

Nine years ago, Chairman Rainer Gut led what I then called "a controlled and brilliantly executed corporate-branding exercise," to establish Credit Suisse as a modern global masterbrand while retaining its valuable First Boston investment banking equity. Mission accomplished. Then last year, new Chairman Oswald Grübel approved the next and final step to monolithic branding. This could have been done simply by dropping "First Boston." Instead, advised by Enterprise IG's London team and its research, Grübel chose to rebrand again, by changing to a post-modern logo that nods to the pre-1997 First Boston ship symbol.

One could hardly ask the incumbent identity firm, Wolff Olins, to scrap its own good work; Grübel needed someone else and chose the London office of Enterprise IG. Responding to the management teams' polar range of wishes, to take pride in tradition and heritage while promoting modern dynamism, Enterprise came up with a have-your-cake positioning: "The Tradition to Innovate." Since the existing logo tilted toward "modern," a new logo would have to reverse course toward "traditional' ... in other words, post-modern. The Enterprise IG designers came up with a lightly-serif-ed, all-caps  wordmark, pulled by two foresails.
Tony Spaeth

Enterprise IG (UK)

Submitted by: Tony Spaeth, 14/11/2006
Status: Estimated by Tony Spaeth
Category: Banks
Country (HQ): Switzerland