Informa is a specialist, high value information provider to the main global sectors via publishing, events and performance improvement. With 9,000 people in 80 countries around the world and an extensive portfolio of brands such as Lloyds List, Routledge and IBC it is one of the leading companies in its sector.
However, an aggressive business acquisition strategy had seen the company expand quickly. None more so than when it merged with the Taylor & Francis publishing group. This led to a joint branding, T&F Informa which was done
in-house. After a year it was clear that this 'bolting-together' of two completely different brands and cultures was not working, the individual companies within the group were being forced to create more and more identities for themselves damaging the brand
Jerome-Ball carried out an extensive research stage that touched all parts of the organisation to get a clear picture of the issues facing the individual trading companies and how best to represent their future needs. This exercise took in all business units and regions and revealed many positive aspects of the enlarged group but a clear problem in the communication of the main group offer and how the individual business units related to it and used the main group company endorsement.
We produced a company positioning matrix clearly showing how all these companies could sit within a visual brand family tree and how they related to each other. Perhaps the most radical recommendation was the change of name to just Informa. This clarified the offer, made a stronger brand and gave the sub-brands a structure to work to. A full identity system was created with online guidelines and templates placed on the company intranet. A series of identity workshops were run after launch to support the implementation across the various sectors and regions.
The brand positioning, structure and identity system has been a universal success and highly praised by many of the marketing personnel working in the various Informa businesses. The simplicity, clarity and accessibility of the identity system has empowered the organisation to easily produce visually exciting and integrated marketing communications.
Jerome-Ball is retained by Informa to support, progress and develop the brand as it evolves providing an online helpdesk and quarterly webinars to keep everyone in touch with the regular identity developments.
Click here to view the online guidelines |
