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2008



old logo's

Having acquired ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries PLC ), Netherlands-based AkzoNobel became the world's largest paints and coatings company. It celebrated this achievement not by adding "ICI" to its name, but by refreshing its existing brand. For this assignment, management returned to Wally Olins, whose 1988 Wolff Olins team had designed Akzo's reaching man (known in the company as Bruce).  Wally's post-Wolff Olins firm is Saffron.

"This is the new AkzoNobel, " says CEO Hans Wijers. "We are one company, with a powerful new global brand" featuring "a subtle name change [to one word],  a revitalizing powerful logo and a new brand architecture.  The logo," he adds, "was already a very strong and distinctive asset, but it has been made more relevant for the 21st century and now has a greater sense of power and energy."

"Even without ICI," Wally Olins told me, "the company had wanted to bring Bruce up to date. In twenty years there'd been enormous growth; the ICI acquisition, the latest of  many, simply added urgency.  A related issue was the proliferation of powerful sub-brands, and the wish for rebalancing via a more powerful corporate presence."  Thus "new Bruce" was designed to be tougher and more assertive... and to more effectively express the company's existing tag line, "Tomorrow's Answers Today."

Berry Oonk, Head of Corporate Branding, confirms that the ICI acquisition triggered the rebranding, but that the larger goals were to communicate "This is a new company" to employees and customers (in equal measure), and to create a one-company feeling. "The former Akzo Nobel was run as a financial holding company, with ten or fifteen operating subsidiaries; now you see more centralization, more unity." New brand architecture reduced the levels from four to two, just corporate and product line branding; paint cans, however branded, will now have "new Bruce" on the back label. And the corporate name was reduced to one word, to end the old habit of thinking Akzo and Nobel were still separate cultures.

"And the company changed in substance in 2007 and 2008. We not only added ICI, we sold our pharma division (for 12 billion euros) and moved headquarters to Amsterdam, all of this part of our new face to the world."The April 25 launch event started with a huge party on the Amsterdam riverside, televised live, with fireworks and the Mayor. That kicked off a big campaign to get the employees into their new brand, including presents to all of them in our 900 locations around the world. And on May 6 we launched an aggressive global ad campaign." 

Logo design: Saffron (UK) and Pentagram (UK)
Visual system: Pentagram

Submitted by: Tony Spaeth, 30/05/2008
Status: Confirmed by Berry Oonk, Head of Corporate Branding, 22 May 2008
Category: Chemicals
Country (HQ): Netherlands