The original sketch of the Citi logo, appropriately on a napkin, by Paula Scher (of Pentagram) in 1998.

Citi has announced that it will finally unite under the brand suggested by Pentagram nine years ago. For some this may not be news, but in the slow moving world of Finance not everything is so simple. It has taken a while to realize that a unified brand may make more sense, and even now it is contested, but as the CEO said, “It is how most of our clients think about us already.”

The blandness of this announcement is actually a tribute to the deftness with which it was carried off. Instead of an overnight overhaul or a trumpet blasting announcement party, the Citigroup slowly and surely made moves towards the use of the new name and logo until, inevitably, it was the name and logo.

The tension at Citi over the logo was primarily internal. Investment bankers didn’t want to be confused with those people who rolled coins at the local branch, and Smith Barney’s hotshots felt like they needed to distance themselves from Travelers Insurance. But this internal strife had no bearing on how the firm was seen from the outside. The four letter catchy “Citi” was all that was needed to communicate “money” and “trust” to most – even larger – customers.

This will hardly be the last brand overhaul for Citi. The company is in a somewhat strained condition following allegations of Todd Thompson’s ties to CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo and after its private bank got kicked out of Japan. There has been a management shakeup as a result, with Sallie Krawcheck effectively accepting a demotion from CFO to the head of the Wealth Management Division.

In an effort to get the kids to play nice, Charles Prince (the CEO) has been trumpeting one culture and one name for over two years. As the soap opera I have recounted above shows, a new brand may not really solve anything. The core issues with Citi all have to do with the fact that its cost base is expanding quicker than its revenue growth. Details for cost cutting will no doubt be announced soon.

The original migration strategy (below) as design in 1998 was considerably slower, and planned to have everything transferred by 2012.

As pentagram’s site says, “Working with consultant Michael Wolff, Pentagram’s recommendation was to unify the merged entity under a single, four letter name—Citi—and to adopt a logo that would transform the Travelers’ red umbrella into an arc over the letter “t.” (Not only is that letter Travelers’ initial, but it also is one of the few letters that looks like an umbrella handle!)”

The London and New York offices of pentagram went to great lengths to show Citigroup that this logo conversion would work, including mockups and demonstrations of how it would operate.

Associated with this plan is the sale of the Travelers Umbrella back to St. Paul Travelers, who will probably rename themselves Travelers.

Read More:
Pentagram’s announcement
Folding Citi’s umbrella – Forbes

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Deregulation, on the face of it, is probably a good thing for most industries. It dislodges inertia, frees up innovation, inspires increasing competitiveness and encourages mergers and strange bedfellows. Financial firms have jumped into this wild west mix, offering every single product that might have a monetary connotation and few that don’t.

But for consumers this is all pretty confusing.

The argument for financial services deregulation was usability-based, consumer-centric and well thought out. But it still confuses otherwise intelligent customers. Here’s why.

Basically, the argument goes like this:
a) when times are good you put your money in a high risk high yield instrument, such as stocks or a hedge fund.
b) when times are bad you put your money into a fixed income vehicle, such as a cd or a savings account.

The point that was made is simple – the same person/entity at different times has need of both these services, so why should they have to go to different businesses?

And indeed there have been simplifications. I bank at Wachovia, and if I were to make them my sole monetary solution they could operate as a one stop shop – offering consumer and business banking, investment and fixed-income solutions, even as an insurance brokerage.

But just because things are simpler for the end user, doesn’t mean these financial brands are healthy. I contend that the schizophrenia of these brands has increased and where managing your money is easier than ever, deciding where and with whom to manage it is nigh impossible.

A good example is The Bank of New York. The Bank of New York has a golden history as a local retail operation first started by Alexander Hamilton in 1874. It still serves the wealthy and elite among New York’s gentry, for instance. The other side of the company is a global competitor offering services to institutional investors, such as bulk processing for mutual funds. These two halves of the business couldn’t be more different in type of service provided, target audience or core competency.

Global logo

Retail banking logo

So it gets confusing. This page with the JPMorgan Chase announcement is a perfect example: http://www.bankofny.com/htmlpages/ydp.htm Who is the target audience? Who needs to know this or is interested?

The old red logo will still be used, for reassurance purposes, I suppose, in the retail side of the bank. Maybe it will be phased out over time. Maybe the Bank of New York is making the distinction between its two halves evident so as to make its retail division more marketable in hopes of selling it.

Logo Critique: The new global logo is a bit of a problem. It is reminiscent of stock certificates, European currency and such, and does suggest to my eye a little bit of a hologram or some advanced watermark. But I wonder about the “the” – is it needed? And will the logo hold up when faxed, photocopied, faxed again and then put on a name tag? The whole magic of the mark is its color, which of course won’t reproduce well in grayscale. Can you see this mark in shining steel on a 50 ft sign? Nor can I.

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From 1970 onwards, market innovations and competition in the financial sector have compelled state and federal regulators to ease Depression-era restrictions on financial institutions – most notably banks. Banks and their holding companies have been permitted to improve the nature and variety of their financial products, pay market interest rates on most deposits, and expand across state lines. This has meant head-to-head competition in some cases, and no one knows where it will all play out.

The trend toward deregulation culminated in 1999 when the Glass-Steagall Act separating banks from securities firms and insurance companies was repealed in congress. Now banks can combine almost every financial service you can imagine into one big “financial holding company.”
As you can imagine, this has created some severe branding problems. No longer will we see a bank that offers just checking, for instance, it may also offer a vast array of risky or just plain odd financial products.

And so how should larger financial institutions, who are (oddly finding themselves) competitively required to enter into all these product offerings, presenting their new brand to the world?

Today we will look at two brands – or more specifically the logos of brands, and hopefully in the days to come we will investigate a few more.

Credit Suisse has eliminated the “First Boston” sub-brand and moved away from the monolithic modern blue and red, to re-enter it’s sailing past with two fore-sails bravely leading the way into an uncertain future.

Here is the logo before 1997:

Here is the “modern” logo till January of 2006:

And here is the current “post modern” logo:

The new look is dynamic, flowing and progressive. I like it and believe it is both reassuring and will do well for Credit Suisse. I like how the type is pulled forward by the sails.

However, it must be said that the balance, heredity, tone and – modernity – of the old 1997 brand is quite striking and it is worth wondering why they didn’t try to evoke it more directly.

Phoenix home life, a life insurance, annuities and asset management company has proceeded from a very contained, strong and resilient mark:

and more recently:

And here is the current curvaceous “phoenix” rising:

I dislike it immensely for a financial services firm, I believe it looks both light and flowery when it should be strong or forward-looking. It reminds me of a hotel chain or some spa brand.

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Web 2.0 logos (and yes, I know, yahoo does not belong among them) show a clumsy adolescence, an awkward period when there are a profusion of “betas” out there and a heartfelt thrill in the technology of connecting people. This collection of logos makes me think of what a iggling bunch of teenage girls might come up with if they were building companies off of a “talking on the phone” business model. But don’t get me wrong, I scan these and I see more than a few of them I really like and that I hope I will be enjoying ten years from now.

Look and enjoy.

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=101793494&context=set-72057594060779001&size=l

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