Polycom is a competitor to Cisco in the conferencing hardware, software and services space. From its founding, in 1990, it has focused on voice, video and data, considered the three pillars of its 'unified communications' promise. Indeed the "poly" in its name, and the design of its symbol (three triangles, on a larger triangle), were intended to support that three-fold offering.

Then success happened, and distorted this branding intent. Polycom's triangular "SoundStation" conference phones earned a central presence in conference rooms worldwide (4 million have been shipped). This extraordinary logo exposure has nailed the Polycom image to voice-related hardware. (It didn't help that the logo and product's sharing of "triangle" reinforced this limiting association.)

In May 2010, Andy Miller assumed leadership as CEO. To respond to the new world of mobile devices, multiple platforms and the cloud, he was determined that Polycom must step up its game in software-based video collaboration and data-intensive solutions. He sensed the current brand image had become a real barrier to this vision, internally as well as externally putting a dampener on employee aspirations as well as on customer and investor expectations. To help address these issues he recruited a brand-savvy Chief Marketing Officer, Kate Hutchison, who in turn engaged John McNeil Studios; "We needed messaging, great storytelling as well as design" Kate told me, "and they're good writers." O'Neil confirms that "Kate wanted a different kind of identity process -- core-values-based, collaborative and advertising-oriented."

McNeil crafted a new brand promise -- "To create experiences that push the greatness of collaboration forward," that appealed to the leadership team as an employee rallying cry. "Our first audience for this effort is our 4,000 employees, worldwide" said Hutchison. "Their excitement with how they spend their working lives, for Polycom's impact on the world, is mission critical."

The design strategies, then (per designer Kim Le Liboux):
- Significant change. Break the speakerphone association, make people rethink and rediscover "Polycom;"
- Replace the spiky, hard-edged and static symbol with a softer, more fluid personality;
- Retain a symbol, but give more emphasis to the name;
- Retain elements of equity (e.g. 'three,' and red)

The new brand was previewed early in April for 2,000 sales leaders and key partners at Polycom's annual TEAM Polycom event, and then at region-by-region employee meetings, the last (and the Web launch) timed to coincide with the April 24 opening of new corporate headquarters in San Jose, California. It has been received, Hutchison reports, with a mix of enthusiasm and "it's about time."

Hopefully investors, too, are seeing in this rebranding a game-changing shift of culture and strategy, not just logo. Analyst Zeus Kerravala certainly gets it, having blogged that "the new logo is nice but I really like the shift to a software oriented company... I am of the opinion that the company is no longer content to be an alternative provider and wants to be in control of its own future."

Credits:
C.E.O. - Andrew Miller
C.M.O. - Kate Hutchison
Identity design - John McNeil Studio, Berkeley CA; John McNeil, Chief Creative Officer; Kim Le Liboux, Executive Creative Director

First Impressions:
Strategy: Clear case of the use of identity change, by a leader, as a directional and motivational leadership tool.
Design: I'm a sucker, I must admit, for sharp, hard-edged distinctiveness, for which the old symbol (while a bit fascist-feeling) was tough to beat. But it became compromised in association, I must agree. So -- sigh. (The all-caps wordmark letterforms, however, were a weak match to the symbol, and no great loss.) I find the new mark to be just adequately distinctive, and soft and friendly -- perhaps appropriately, but at some cost to strength and stature. It well serves, however, the message of change.

what conferencing software can do

Corporate Brand Matrix ratings:
0% structural, 100% strategic, 0% functional (est.)

Replacing ...

4,000,000 shipped

CEO Andy Miller

CMO Hutchison

^ top of page