Wachovia Corp. to unveil new corporate logo

Posted 8:04AM on Wednesday 13th March 2002 ( 23 years ago )

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - For most of its investors, the unveiling of Wachovia Corp.'s new corporate logo pales next to priorities such as increasing shareholder value and boosting the bank's outlook for future earnings growth. For the bank's 84,000 employees, the new logo symbolizes a pivotal step in the task of building a new Wachovia brand after last year's $14.9 billion merger between the old Wachovia and First Union Corp. The merger, completed in September, created the nation's fourth-largest bank with $330 billion in assets, 2,800 bank branches and 19 million customers in 11 states and the District of Columbia. The new logo, dreamed up by bank executives working with consultant InterBrand, will appear throughout the franchise's East Coast territory, on thousands of bank branches, business cards and golf shirts. While it's already established that the bank's name will be Wachovia, the company has kept details about the new corporate icon under wraps in advance of Thursday's unveiling by chief executive officer Ken Thompson. "From the beginning we have said we want the focus to be on the employees," Wachovia spokeswoman Christy Phillips said. "This is what this day is all about." Thompson and chairman L.M. "Bud" Baker have seen the new logo and given it their blessing, she said. "Our new brand is more than a logo," Phillips said. "It says who we are and what we want to be." Tony Plath, a finance professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who follows the banking industry, said it's critical that the launch of the brand is executed without a flaw. "They can't mess it up," he said. "They need to show they are firing on all cylinders." Wachovia's immense franchise, which stretches from New England through the Carolinas and into Florida, makes it more of a challenge, Plath said. "They need to convince everyone who lives north of the Mason-Dixon line that Wachovia is not a sub sandwich," he said. "This new logo must be able to travel." In the South, where Wachovia has been around for decades, there's another challenge. "South of the Mason-Dixon line, they need to introduce the new brand without alienating the old Wachovia customers," Plath said. "They need a name that migrates the old First Union customers into the new Wachovia." Analysts who follow the bank's stock admit they haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the new logo. "I would say things like customer service and integration of the two banks' operations are far more important," said Chris Marinac, of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Nancy Bush, who follows Wachovia's stock for Ryan Beck & Co., said changing the name means little until the two banks are actually operating as one company. Customers won't see the new logo at bank branches for months. Bank signs in Florida will be the first to change this fall. Branches in the Carolinas won't have new signs until 2003. Wachovia Securities, the bank's corporate and investment banking arm, will be the first unit to use the new brand in advertising this spring in financial publications and on business television shows.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/3/197531