John Stanley

Industry context
The DNV Group and the GL Group announced their intention to merge and form a world leading certification and technical advisory body within the maritime, oil & gas, energy and business assurance industries – in short the risk management industry.

As part of the integration planning process, they needed to develop a brand strategy to unify the two companies of 16,000 engineers under one new identity. The strategy would combine their 150 years of heritage while signaling the combined new vision to create global impact for a genuinely safe and sustainable future.

Challenges
• Two very different companies with two very different cultures.

• Working with a team that were uncertain of their own future in the new organisation.

• Educating engineering focused teams on the value and need for brand.

• An industry with little perceived room for differentiation.

• Constantly driving them forward to ensure a strong and distinctive brand to unite their organisations.

• Managing the complexity of the raft of other individual brands with their own heritage and history which had been acquired by each of the companies over time.

• Legal constraints of working with and getting the agreement of two companies pre-merger, where neither could share documents or talk about their business to each other. 

• Uniting the two companies with one vision to create global impact for a safe and sustainable future.

Strategy and results
• A future focused, collaborative approach to generating a brand with the two companys' brand teams, but also with the management and leadership throughout DNV and GL globally.  

• United them under the concept of the ‘The Broader View’ to signify the broadest service offering in the industry aimed at enabling customers to make the world safer, smarter and greener.

• Capitalizing on their existing visual assets, combining colours and symbols while adding significant new dimensions, creating a highly unique and ownable identity, inside and outside of their category. And a symbol that has the ability to expand infinitely to convey the brand idea of ‘The Broader View’.

• ‘The Broader View' idea also provided a way to engage and unite employees in the change programme, an idea that worked across all cultural boundaries.

• An organisation that is now passionate about how brand helps them and their customers.