The brief: Following on the heels of an iShares brand refresh, Barclays Global Investors, the parent brand, was due for a refresh. This was largely driven by a mandate from the Barclays leadership team to bring the brand closer to the Barclays family. It was a precursor to Barclays introducing itself to the US market, initially through Barclaycard, and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
The role: I led the identity update with Landor, finding a way to introduce the spirit of Barclays, a large UK-based retail bank, while preserving the institutional investor nature of BGI with a modern approach. We managed to leverage existing photo library assets by merging them with a silhouette framing image, thus creating deeper conceptual storytelling.
We then carried the new identity into BGI’s San Francisco headquarters with environmental graphics that brought the brand story into lobbies, floors and meeting spaces.
The result: The brand refresh was well received by Barclays leadership, and they in turn tapped our small San Francisco-based brand team to lead larger efforts in advertising and sponsorships (NBA’s Brooklyn Nets) to further introduce Barclays to America. Both BGI and iShares were acquired by BlackRock in 2009, combining $3.3 trillion in AUM, forming the largest asset manager in the world, which it still is today.
