Pfizer, Inc.

For several years, Pfizer’s corporate communications staff had nurtured the idea of an identity change, to update the company’s visual appearance and professionalism. Its identity consultants, Anspach Grossman Portugal, had done the required management interviews, and proposed an identity plan which somewhat cleaned up the branding and nomenclature system. But in 1987 we were getting nowhere, having found as yet no leader to champion the change. No one wanted to explain and defend what was still seen as a largely technical or ‘esthetic’ improvement.

In one last effort, a “fish or cut bait” meeting with CEO Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. I was at last able to link a proposed new logo to Pratt’s most cherished leadership goals for Pfizer. There would be benefits in clarification of a more focused health-care positioning of the Pfizer brand, and in a lowering of the traditional wall between the U.S. and international divisions. But to Pratt, the larger opportunity would be to kick-start a more fundamental change of culture … to make Pfizer’s people believe they could be, and actually become, the industry’s leaders in innovation.

In reality, this goal was credible, and supported by an awesome pipeline. But “Innovation” was not Pfizer’s self-image. The old oval logo took employees back to Brooklyn, in wartime 1943 (when Pfizer had mastered production of penicillin); the event of a logo change, as much as the nature of the change, would face them forward.

The new mark, then, was launched to employees as “A Symbol of Innovation.” As Ed Pratt explained, “Innovation defines us. It is the source of our success.” The claim was credible; backed by Pfizer's pipeline, but innovation was not yet Pfizer’s self image.

The design execution in this instance shows how little really needs to be changed, graphically, to signal intended cultural change. Gene Grossman's brilliant redesign, linked to a leadership commitment and forcefully communicated, effectively “tipped” Pfizer’s self-image.