Approaching its bicentennial, The Hartford looked to CoreBrand to help energize the brand and mark its 200th year. Our work helped reveal the brand equity, provide a basis for a new positioning and resulted in a new commemorative identity system.

Situation

Very few brands can boast the rich history that The Hartford can. In business since 1810, The Hartford was there for the Chicago Fire and the San Francisco earthquake, bonded construction of the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge, and stood by customers through the Civil War, the Great Depression and two World Wars.

Any anniversary is an occasion for a company to look back and celebrate its accomplishments, but research revealed that The Hartford’s customers, brokers and agents considered the 200-year milestone a meaningful achievement that deserved recognition. More importantly, senior leadership understood that the bicentennial was a call to action for them to clearly define what The Hartford stands for today and keep the brand energized for the years ahead.

With the customer brand research as our foundation we looked closely at the evolution of The Hartford Stag, the symbol of the company’s brand as far back as 1861.

Solution

Without diminishing the current brand's promise of strength and stability, we created a commemorative bicentennial logo that evokes The Hartford’s promise of empathy, expertise and enduring values. Our new drawing shows the Stag standing tall and looking forward against a rich textured background that suggests depth and perspective. The bicentennial message — Trusted 200 Years — speaks to their enduring relationship with customers.

In tandem with the new logo, we developed a dynamic visual system to give communications a more modern look and feel and better reflect The Hartford personality. Bold holding shapes are used to stage distinctive combinations of color, imagery, typography and the perspective supergraphic.

The design system — and the unique templates and toolkits we created — give business units the flexibility they were looking for to put their own spin on their collateral without sacrificing corporate unity.