Featured cases

2008



old logo's

This dramatic rebranding effects Thomson's acquisition of Reuters, expressing it more as the creation of a new company than as merely a merger of equals. CEO Tom Glocer made it personal:
" I write to share my excitement over the formation today of Thomson Reuters. Birthdays are generally joyous occasions, so I hope you will permit me this celebration. Rare is the offspring who enters the world as the leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals and traces his family history to 1851  ... We hope you will see many positive changes from Thomson Reuters, starting with our new brand."

Rebranding started September 2007, with engagement of Interbrand for a classic brand research,  positioning and design process.  Since Thomson grew from Canada-based family roots to acquire the more historic (and distinctive) Reuters brand, the name decision was only to be expected.

Given the name, designer Chris Campbell tells us "we knew early on that a symbol would be required, at the highest level, to link together the various businesses.  Increasingly they are web-based, where a mark can stand out more clearly. And a symbol would help to establish their presence and identity as a brand new company. So a symbol was necessary, we felt, both for brand architecture and to build recognition.

"The idea of the spiral, made of dots, leverages the equity of the Reuters dots. Conceptually each of the dots represents a point of data, so the story is that Thomson Reuters organizes the data to give it shape and meaning. Even at rest the shape has a feeling of being alive and in motion, and supports the notion that 'intelligent information is alive'."

As for color, "we agreed early on that we would not be another blue brand (like Thomson and Reuters, both linked to their legacy as a 20th century company) so we took orange, a more optimistic part of the Reuters identity, to express our future."

The launch was about as aggressive as could be; internally, global closed-circuit broadcasts of the staged event; externally, two or three-page spreads in major papers plus a Times Square billboard extravaganza, followed by an impressively sustained campaign.

A change of communicated HQ location, from Stamford (Connecticut) to the Reuters building on Times Square, was part of the branding ("to further heighten the company's profile," says the NY Times). Legal HQ remains in Toronto, where the Thomson family lives.

For corporate-level identity purposes, the combined Reuters and Thomson businesses have been regrouped into six market-based sectors (Financial, Legal, Tax & Accounting, Scientific, Health Care, Media). But as of launch, go-to-market brand architecture was still being planned; category brands like Westlaw and Checkpoint will probably keep their names, visually endorsed, while others may also retain their logos... thus it's a "mixed" signature system.

Interbrand (NY)

Submitted by: Tony Spaeth, 7/06/2008
Status: Estimated by Tony Spaeth
Category: Information services
Country (HQ): United States