THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 2, 1996 TAG: 9605020409
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
It's one of the most-remembered - and perhaps better forgotten - TV commercials of the past few years. Wild-haired tennis star Andre Agassi grunts his way through a pitch for Canon cameras and then leaves America with this profundity: ``Image is everything.''
Ken Love would like to agree. As vice president and creative director for the New York-based image consultant Lippincott & Margulies Inc., he's overseen dozens of corporate makeovers.
But Love says attempts at image alterations - through the changing of names or logos, or both - are doomed to backfire if an organization can't back up the new rhetorical signals it's sending.
``The last thing you want to do is enter into an identity program when you don't have your act together,'' he says. ``When you make a change like that, you're going to get all kinds of increased attention, and that can quickly lead to scrutiny . . . if you've got other, bigger problems to attend to.''
This business of images - creating them, changing them - is keeping consulting firms like Love's hopping these days.
With all the divesting, merging and reorganizing going on in the corporate world, the image experts are in demand to help create new names and corporate banners.
Even signscapes we've grown accustomed to for decades are changing. A case in point is Tarmac PLC.
On Wednesday, the big British construction and building-materials company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Norfolk, started flying new colors. Over the next three years, the company's black and white logo of seven clustered ``T's'' will disappear. Taking its place on concrete trucks, hard hats and stationery will be a green and gold emblem that looks somewhat like a tilted oval with a dagger through its middle.
The decision to change its look wasn't made lightly. Tarmac is scuttling a logo it's been using since 1964, one that's widely recognized in the 27 countries in which it operates.
But by replacing it, company executives are hoping to send a strong message of change to customers and employees.
Tarmac has in the past several years gone through a wrenching reorganization in which it has jettisoned a number of business lines. Now it is focusing on just two main core operations - heavy building materials and construction services - and aggressively expanding in those sectors.
In light of the ongoing changes, Tarmac executives decided that the old logo had grown old-fashioned. ``It stood for bricks, road-building and outdated notions about construction,'' the company says in an employee newsletter explaining the change. ``It did not depict the forward-looking, dynamic organization that we are building.''
So Tarmac will spend million of dollars to project a new look.
Image consultant Love says that in many cases, perhaps in the case of Tarmac, the main target of such makeovers is not customers, but employees. A dramatic change in the visual images a company projects ``can be a significant factor in solidifying the larger organizational change that's taking place,'' he says.
In the world of image and identity consulting, the Tarmac change is a relative blip.
Far more dramatic changes are taking place. AT&T Corp., in its breakup into three companies, has created several big new names and accompanying images.
And in March, Sprint Corp. spun off its cellular-phone unit into a new outfit. That company's name, 360 Communications Co., and bold green circle logo, have been widely hailed by identity consultants, including Love.
``I think it's brilliant,'' he says. ``I wish I did it. It's fresh and memorable. Using an icon like 360, they're conjuring up all kinds of images that support what the company is trying to do.''
He's less enamored of MCI Communications Inc.'s recent logo change, in which the letters MCI were switched from orange to blue and a star added in place of an overhanging thin line.
It was so modest a change, Love says, ``I'm puzzled as to why they even did it.''
But Love does gives the company credit for paying attention to the banners it flies.
Companies sometimes overlook the value of their ``image assets,'' he says. They project too many images or don't freshen signs and stationery often enough. That can turn off customers.
If, among other things, TWA had repainted its planes more frequently, Love says, the company might have remained one of the nation's leading airlines - instead of what it is today, an also-ran. ILLUSTRATION: Image is everything?
Graphic
by CNB