New brand identity for Arcelor Mittal soon

KOLKATA: It will perhaps go down as one of the most challenging brand launches in recent adverstising history. Arcelor Mittal, the combined entity formed out of the mega merger between steel giants Arcelor S.A and LN Mittal’s Mittal Steel, is set to unveil its new brand identity soon.

A new logo, corporate colours and a new brand positioning strategy for the group will be unveiled following the deal between the two companies which was clinched nearly a year back in June, 2006. The impending revelation of Arcelor Mittal’s future new brand is being keenly awaited by the global steel community and the over three lakh employees of the group across 60 countries in four continents.

Global branding consultancy, FutureBrand, which had earlier worked on the Mittal Steel brand has been appointed to create the unified Arcelor Mittal brand. FutureBrand won the pitch against competition from the likes of Wolff Olins, Landor and Enterprise IG.

The key challenge for the common brand exercise is “to merge the two business cultures, creating one new, single identity, and motivating everyone to work together towards their common goal,” according to a brand update on arcelormittal.tv, a webtv and blog channel spaecially created in February to document the entire merger process between the two companies.

There is also the challenge of deploying it within the company around the world. After it is unveiled to an internal audience, the new brand will be deployed throughout the ArcelorMittal group.

They will spread the message around a unique band of 60 ‘brand champions’ who have been identified and they will be responsible for rolling out the brand in every location which houses an ArcelorMittal location. Across the group, almost 250 people are dealing, either on a full or part time basis, with internal and external communication issues on all levels.

Earlier, nearly 100 interviews were conducted with ArcelorMittal representatives as well as journalists, analysts and clients. In addition to this, over 8,000 ArcelorMittal employees responded to an online branding survey that all of them received in their e-mail. ‘Future’ and ‘change’ were two dominant ideas that respondents felt should go into the brand idea.