From corporate positioning to naming strategy to brand management, our work with Ciba was  broad and deep. Spending nearly a year on-site in Basel, we helped measure and define the corporate brand, named products and created a global brand management process. We even created and launched a global brand-licensing strategy.

Situation

Ciba Specialty Chemicals first took wing in January 1997. The company was launched as the result of one of Switzerland’s largest global offerings, a spin-off from the merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy. Its new identity was an evocative five-color butterfly that symbolized the company’s five divisions.

But even the best corporate identity isn’t a brand until it has been carefully defined and thoughtfully executed across the entire organization. Ciba needed CoreBrand to give meaning to the butterfly and use the brand strategy to bring order to a vast range of products in the 112 markets that Ciba serves around the globe.

Solution

We looked closely at the expanse of Ciba’s businesses to tease out the core idea that unified them all. From the raw materials to the customer and ultimately to the end-user/consumer, the Ciba story was all about transformation and enhancement. Ciba made its customers products stronger, brighter, fresher, whiter, softer, more durable, easier to care for: “Inspiring effects.” The new brand was communicated to customers, prospects the financial community and even end consumers with a corporate advertising campaign showing people using the products transformed by Ciba’s chemistries.

The inspiring effects promise provided a robust foundation for executing the brand. It became a distinguishing organizing principle for the corporate product architecture and naming strategy. For every new product, you must understand the function, capture the effect, communicate the benefit.

And because the brand promise was about effects and benefits that the retail consumer could understand and put a value on, we were able to build out an ingredient branding program that allowed Ciba’s customers to command premium prices.