Credit Suisse
1996
Super league
In the mid 1990s, Credit Suisse had a simple ambition: to be a world player. It had acquired the investment bank First Boston in 1988, and built up a significant asset management business, but the parts didn’t add up to a whole, and Credit Suisse wasn’t seen as a member of the banking super league.
Power to do
Wolff Olins created a brand strategy that brought the group together, and gave the business the clout it needed. Building on Credit Suisse’s four strengths – humanity, authority, wisdom and innovation – we summed up the group’s scale and breadth as ‘the power for you to do’. We then developed brand ideas for each of the group’s four businesses – First Boston, Asset Management, Private Banking, and the retail bank in Switzerland – so that each business would give meaning to the group, and the group would give strength to each business. We expressed all of this through a system of logos that combined Swiss purism with global forcefulness. The brand strategy was launched in 1996, and for the following six years we acted as partner to Credit Suisse, advising on the development of the strategy, and on its acquisition of the insurance company Winterthur.
Global growth
Since 1996, Credit Suisse has confidently taken its place on the world stage, and over the following decade, the business has grown from 34,000 to 44,000 employees, with all this growth outside Switzerland. In 2006, Credit Suisse moved to a single brand, dropping the First Boston name, and adopted a new logo, based on First Boston’s traditional ship imagery.
