Lippincott & Margulies and Mercer Management Consulting Unite Brand Capabilities to Form New Organization Called Lippincott Mercer

    NEW YORK--Jan. 22, 2003--Lippincott & Margulies has announced that it will unite its identity and brand strategy consultancy with the brand science offering of sister firm Mercer Management Consulting.
    The new organization, called Lippincott Mercer, combines Lippincott's 57 years of excellence in brand and design with Mercer's rigorous brand analytical tools, for a seamless and integrated brand offering.
    Several Mercer senior brand science strategists are joining Lippincott Mercer's New York City, Boston and London offices to lead the firm's work in this area. These experienced consultants specialize in the application of quantitative and qualitative analysis to brand disciplines like brand equity valuation, customer experience management and brand portfolio economics. Their appointments will be announced in a separate press release.
    "We are very pleased to bring together the best branding talent and capabilities of both firms into a single, unified consultancy. We believe that this will further solidify our reputation for using intellectual rigor to solve the most complex branding challenges faced by global organizations today," explained Ken Roberts, Lippincott Mercer's chairman and chief executive officer. "Whether we're creating visual identities, names, positionings, interactive programs, retail environments or helping clients manage customer experiences, our goal is to deliver smart, practical solutions-and measurable results."
    Lippincott has evolved a great deal since its founding in 1945 as a product and packaging design firm by engineer J. Gordon Lippincott and architect Walter Margulies. The company was a resounding success, developing such iconic designs as the red-and-white Campbells Soup can, the Betty Crocker spoon, the General Mills big "G", and the FTD Mercury logo. Lippincott also helped to design the Tucker automobile and adapted the Coca-Cola logo for packaging.
    Even then, the firm took a different approach to design than its contemporaries, employing mixed teams of experts including engineers, artists, interior decorators and merchandising specialists to tackle specific assignments.
    In the late 1950's, the company turned its focus to corporate identity, proposing that corporate brands should be managed, preserved and extended with the same care given to other assets. Lippincott & Margulies introduced the discipline of planning and managing all the ways a company communicates its individuality-from its logo and advertisements to its corporate communications and the color of the trucks that haul its products. Lippincott & Margulies was acquired by Marsh and McLennan Companies in 1986 as part of MMC's strategy to broaden its professional services capabilities. It is part of Mercer Inc., a family of companies which also includes Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Mercer Investment Consulting, Mercer Management Consulting, Mercer Delta Organizational Consulting, Mercer Risk, Finance and Insurance Consulting and NERA Economic Consulting.
    The brand science offering from Mercer Management Consulting has its origins in a world-class marketing science capability that dates back to the 1970's, when brands were often managed in the absence of rigorous analysis and measurement. A team of brand strategists determined that the application of advanced quantitative modeling and segmentation techniques could help companies define and measure the equity in their brands and adjust their brand positioning for greater impact on customer behavior. Mercer began to apply these methods to the growing complexity of branding challenges for companies such as American Express and Continental Airlines.
    Over the years, Mercer has applied the Nobel-Prize winning economic theories of Daniel McFadden to quantify the ability of brands to shift demand in the marketplace and then determine which parts of a brand's "signal" could be improved to increase customer choice. They have also applied economic principles to an organization's portfolio of brands to determine how changes in the brand architecture impact value. The brand science specialists are also able to help clients project the financial impact of improving their customers' experience and optimize the organization's ability to deliver its brand promise. Mercer's brand science clients have included AOL, Sprint, IBM, Citigroup, Compaq, American Electric Power, and others.
    Continued demand for these science-driven brand capabilities in the past decade have led Mercer to partner often with sister company Lippincott for a more comprehensive client offering. They also incorporated sister firms in the Mercer Inc. family to help clients to align business design, operations, logistics and human resources to deliver consistent, branded experiences to their audiences. Lippincott Mercer now adds customer experience management, brand equity valuation and brand portfolio optimization capabilities to its existing offerings.
    "This is the beginning of a new chapter in Lippincott's 57-year history. Brand science is an exciting, growing area for us, and we are pleased to extend this offering to our clients under one roof," added Roberts. "We will continue to develop advanced tools to help our clients become better known, better understood and create preference for their products and services through the successful development and management of their brands."
    In addition to brand science, Lippincott Mercer provides a broad range of brand consulting services including strategy, management, communications and implementation. This includes naming, logo design, design systems, packaging, interactive/interface design and information design. The firm has also won acclaim for its successful brand environment programs including retail store design, customer experience mapping, sign systems, visual merchandising and trade show/exhibit design.

    About Lippincott Mercer

    Lippincott Mercer is a leading identity and brand strategy consultancy. The firm was founded in 1945 as Lippincott & Margulies and is a unit of Mercer Management Consulting, which is part of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. Lippincott operates globally from its headquarters in New York City and other offices in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Recent clients include Citigroup, Deloitte & Touche, Eddie Bauer, ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Nissan, RadioShack, Sprint and Televisa. For more information, visit www.lippincottmercer.com.