Alliance Boots plc

New:  Merger of names and logos

Launched:  July 31, 2006

Story in brief:
It's another Euro-merger, to gain critical mass and cost synergies; it combines the uniquely named Boots, the U.K.'s leading pharmacy chain (1,500 retail outlets in the U.K. and Ireland, and a huge Boots-branded product line) with Alliance UniChem's 1,250 pharmacies across Europe and UniChem's 5,700-unit distribution customers.  CEO Richard Baker calls it "Europe's foremost international pharmacy-led health and beauty group."

Baker's advisors chose Creative Leap,  a London firm who had previously worked both for Alliance UniChem and for Boots, to design the new institution's logo (which is not intended to replace existing retail brandmarks like the Boots oval). The designers used elements from both brands, redrawing Alliance's letterforms for the "Alliance Boots" wordmark, and containing it in a Boots-like oval whose swooshes, in Alliance colors but with "contemporary" gradations added, evoke the Alliance "four arrows" mark.

Credits:
C.E.O. - Richard Baker
Name decision: - TBD
Identity design - Creative Leap

First Impressions:
Where have we seen this before? On the other hand, why not? Although it is a cliché and a somewhat mechanically constructed composition of pre-existing parts, it's done with elegance and should be fully functional as a corporate mark.

The gradations in the swooshes are indeed "contemporary," of their era, but the thought "fad" lurks therein. We do it because we can, enabled by technology, although it often dilutes graphic force and clarity.

The name decision, however, is questionable. As a freestanding brand name, "Boots" is hugely distinctive and endearingly quirky. But as one part of a two-part name, indeed a noun behind a possible qualifier, it is merely quirky and potentially offputting.