Tagline Development & Rollout
Background
Barclays Global Investors wanted a tagline to reinforce their brand identity. After trying unsuccessfully to do it in-house and with another agency, they asked Reid and two other branding experts to take on the project as a team. The tagline had to win approval internationally and, of course, with their legal department.
Solution
We were successful. The tagline that was chosen is “Performance Through Innovation.” It reflects BGI’s history as an innovator of investment products.
Reid Neubert + Friends was then selected to graphically combine the new tagline with their existing wordmark, which they didn’t want to change. Such a “retrofit” is always a challenge. Our final solution was to place the tagline above the wordmark rather than in the usual position below or following it.
We also developed the color standards and usage guidelines for the combined wordmark, and produced it in several languages.
Rollout
Our next step was to introduce the new tagline to the company’s employees. While BGI is an investment management company, still, most of the employees are not investment professionals who can get excited about innovations such as index funds and alpha tilts.
The challenge was to make the concept behind the tagline more exciting for employees and something they would relate to. We came up with the concept of featuring non-financial performance innovations, such as in sports and transportation, then tying those to BGI’s financial innovations.
The featured subject was a high jumper. “When Dick Fosbury flew over the high jump backwards in the 1968 Olympics,” the copy says, “he broke the world record and literally turned the sport around...”
We designed and produced posters that were put up around the company’s offices on launch day and a brochure version of the high jump poster that was given to each employee. The brochure further explained the “performance through innovation” concept.
Our other two posters featured the bullet train and inline skates. The campaign was so well received that employees actually requested their own copies of the posters for their work spaces.
