Engelhard: A new vision from a world-leading company

A Fortune 500 company with US$5 billion in sales and 100 locations in 29 countries, Engelhard Corporation is the world-leading surface and materials science company. It provides technologies for environmental, process, appearance, and performance applications. With the appointment of a new CEO, Engelhard embarked on an ambitious program to be “seen in a new light – one that better reveals [its] true worth.”

Engelhard thus embarked upon the impressive task of repositioning itself by choosing BrandLogic to help articulate its unique value to customers and investors, and inspire employees to understand and communicate the new brand vision.

BrandLogic began working on a refreshed corporate identity to illustrate the company’s new vision. Discovery, in the form of a global communications audit, revealed a disparate collection of looks and sub-brands across the previous “federation of businesses.” Everything from business cards to product signatures and from sales collateral to signage reflected an organization that did not have a distinctive personality or a single voice.

Key to the new program was creating a flexible system that captured the essence of the “single focus” ingredient – brand strategy. This was achieved with a revised logo treatment, corporate signature, color palette, typography, image treatment, and graphic motif – which would all work together to support the new idea of Engelhard. To communicate the new program and launch the identity globally, BrandLogic then created an interactive implementation strategy.

Engelhard’s corporate Web site was the first major implementation of the brand and perhaps the most challenging. Previously, each business unit had its own site along with several sub-brand sites with unique navigation, verbal messages, product presentation, and visual designs.
   To reflect the new “single focus strategy” and enable customers to navigate easily to the hundreds of products available, BrandLogic collaborated with all stakeholders to gain support from business leaders and product managers.

Through exhaustive modeling based on this exploration, BrandLogic developed a solution that would accurately represent the new business strategy and markedly transform the presentation of the company to the world. Consequently, BrandLogic designed the information architecture, technology platform, interfaces, visual presentation, and content management systems in such a way that they would directly support Engelhard’s brand strategy and reflect its new identity program.

The new site allowed users to select a path based on their preference – “Technologies we create” or “Markets we serve.” Once they began to navigate, users found all products only three clicks away from the home page.
     To complete this solution, BrandLogic utilized technology and advanced templates. These technologies allowed users to share content across other business applications and enabled the site to expand and change over time – easily and cost-effectively.

Creating a brand community and consistently guiding everyday usage across the global enterprise protects the integrity of the program. BrandLogic implemented Brand Ensemble™, its proprietary, Web-based brand management system, to facilitate efficient communication with employees and the distribution of brand assets globally. According to Engelhard’s identity director, “No one could have done a better job at expressing our new corporate personality.”

As excitement about the new brand spread, Engelhard announced to its employees worldwide: “The new Engelhard signage system joins the rest of our new branding program to deliver a powerful message that each of our facilities is part of a seamlessly integrated, quality-driven enterprise. Even a passing glance identifies each site and every location within it as belonging to Engelhard.”

Launching the identity guidelines was just the beginning of this seamless branding program. Engelhard chose BrandLogic as its preferred agency to implement and extend its identity to diverse applications, develop cross-media communications, and provide active brand management services, including marketing literature, publications, and packages. The BrandLogic consultation relationship also included naming decisions and the use of secondary marks and joint-venture signatures.

Engelhard understood that for a truly seamless brand, no detail was too small. Computers throughout the company showed a brand screensaver. Even the pavement outside its key R&D facility included brand elements.

The results? According to a leading industry analyst, “Engelhard is finally turning a previous “federation of businesses into a cohesive story." See event