Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies Can Align Strategy, Culture, and Identity Through Corporate Branding

Foreword

I have a little story to tell.

Many, many years ago when Britain still had a flourishing industrial base, my then company Wolff Olins was appointed by the chairman of one of the largest machine tool companies to create what we were starting to call a corporate identity programme.

Our client was about to launch a new range of CAD CAM machines—that is, computer-aided design and manufacturing equipment. We were told that CAD CAM was going to sweep the world and that the new machines being designed by our client's company were state of the art. So he desperately wanted them to be first to market. Breakthrough in design, relatively easy to operate, superb global backup and service. That was the intention.

The new corporate identity was to ...