The PwC brand hadn’t been overhauled for over a decade. In that time global business had changed dramatically. Wolff Olins was given the job of bringing the identity into this brave new world. Frank Sutton reports

Sometimes it’s the little things that count. As PwC’s Mike Davies explains, September’s rebrand of PriceWaterhouseCoopers as PwC was inspired by practical as much as strategic reasons. “Try getting a 22-letter name on a golf ball,” he says. “Many of our clients play golf, but branding a ball with a name like ours wasn’t easy.”

Of course Davies is quick to point out the strategic reasons behind the new branding too. “We wanted an identity to encapsulate who we are today, and our ambitions for our clients and our 163,000 employees around the world. It was also 12 years since our last rebrand. So it just felt timely.”

The shifting sands of global commerce also played a part. “We now operate in 154 countries, so how things translate is very important to us. Translating our previous name into some languages, especially in countries like China, had been a challenge in the past.”

Which brings us back to those 22 letters. The golf ball example may have been a bit tongue in cheek, but it is part of a bigger issue. Representing the brand on- or off-line was much harder with 22 letters than with three. “Another practical example is signage. We were limited in how we could present our name on a building. It effectively had to be long and thin.”

Using the name in printed materials was just as problematic. “People would print it in strange colours and try to squash it in,” says Davies. “In short, we’d had feedback that our old identity was not the most user-friendly.”

Enter branding agency Wolff Olins. It was its job to work with PwC’s own brand team to come up with the new look. It already had a good understanding of the business, having worked with PwC for a number of years (including the ill-fated branding of PwC’s consulting arm as ‘Monday’).

“A brand is not just a visual identity system. It's what people think and say about us. Visual identities are a bit like a Mark Rothko painting. What you get out depends on you.”

One of the first things Wolff Olins’ Melanie McShane talks about is the colours used in the new identity. “There’s been a tendency among professional services firms to adopt quite cold, institutional colours – blues and greens. These create a feeling of being different and separate from clients.

“PwC’s people and approach are warmer than that and we wanted our choice of colours to reflect this. We didn’t want it to feel like a faceless institution.”
Mike Davies adds to this. “We wanted to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. The main way we do that is through out work, but the visual identity can help to embody that. We wanted to move away from the colours used by others in our industry.”

There was also method in the selection of lower-case letters in the name ‘pwc’. McShane again: “We didn’t use upper-case as that would have seemed like we were shouting. What we have created instead is something more conversational. And that reflects the collaborative nature of the business.”

The growth of the digital world played an equally big part in the thinking behind the new identity digital environments which is where a huge number of PwC’s engagements now take place,” explains McShane. “It’s very much designed to be flexible and appropriate for movement. Traditional brands are quite static, this one isn’t.”

Davies gives his take on this. “The new identity is designed to work across digital platforms. The previous identity was created in 1998 when the internet was not as well-used; there were no iPhone apps in those days.

“Our new logo lends itself to movement and animation. It can move and mutate into different shapes dependent on media. On the home page, for example, you’ll see some jiggling about.”

This flexibility also applies to the print world. “In print it can easily be blown up or shrunk. We are also giving our people the freedom to change the combination of colours. Hopefully it provides a more uniform look but also offers some flexibility, within our parameters. In the past the lack of flexibility had led to all sorts of variations, and this had been an issue.”

The new brand went live in September but the rollout will take time. “Most physical materials are going to be replaced as stuff runs out, such as business cards. We were also – given the economic climate - careful to explain that this wasn’t going to cost huge amounts of money. We were going to keep cost to a minimum and spread them over a matter of years,” says Davies.

Melanie McShane picks this point up. “The new identity is already in place in some parts of the network. It is not meant to be a big bang though.”

However those employees that are now working with it seem pleased. McShane partly puts this down to the way the new identity was created. “We worked closely with stakeholders at every level of the business. Internally, everyone has been able to chip in ideas. And we did rigorous testing, so when we did launch there was an instant sense of buy-in.”

Davies chips in. “We have 160,000 employees around the world. There will always be some people who don’t like it, who want to know where the old colours are. But the average age of our employees is just 27, so most people are good at adapting to change. The vast majority of people like the new identity, although it’ll take time to bed down and settle in.”

The new look also has an important role to play in attracting the next generation of PwC employees, argues Davies. “We recruit 30,000 people each year. I think the brand has some impact on that. We work hard on how we position ourselves in the graduate recruitment market. The opportunities you can offer people are obviously more important than the visual identity, but the identity has an impact. People make rapid judgments on people pertaining to how they look and they present themselves. The same is true with a company.

“The identity plays a really important role in getting people – not just graduates - excited about the new brand. The visuals are the simplest bit to get hold of, so we use that as a way to excite people.

“However, we have tried to make clear that a brand is not just a visual identity system. It’s what people think and say about us. And key to that is our people. A lot of work has gone into explaining what our brand is and what we want people to say about us. We’ve tried to reinforce that the new identity is just the tip of the iceberg,” explains Davies.

But he’s realistic about the impact the new identity will have. “I wouldn’t want to be too pretentious. Visual identities are a bit like a Mark Rothko painting. What you get out depends on you.”

Cheryl Giovannoni, Landor Associates What a breath of fresh air Wolff Olins’ work for pwc is. None of the steely blues, corporate greys and soaring business towers of excess to remind us of the financial meltdown. Instead, a warm, interesting and up-to-date identity that doesn’t try too hard. What a pity that the website lacks the same treatment. Still the same black and white mug shots of the leadership team, for example. Perhaps that will come, but for this work to be truly transformative, it needs to go beyond an elegant piece of new identity to being the representation of an organisation that lives and breathes its implications.