Bagel Tuesday - Fresh ideas. Toasted opinions.

OppenheimerFunds happened to announce its "new brand" last week at the same time the mutual fund tribes were gathering at their largest annual pow-wow, the General Membership Meeting of the Investment Company Institute (ICI) in Washington DC.

I hesitate to call it a new brand because it appears to be basically a redrawing of the "four hands" logo with some updated typography. (There's certainly more to it than that, but we're not privy to the internal documentation.) The new mark has greater depth and dimension than the old—which incidentally goes counter to the supposed flat design trend reported breathlessly in The New York Times a few weeks ago. OppenheimerFunds's press release described it as a "multidimensional and transparent evolution":

The new look and feel demonstrates our belief in providing greater transparency for investors that operate in an increasingly multidimensional world, and acknowledges that it is no longer enough for asset management firms to simply view the world through the lens of our own industry.

Well, you can take that for what it's worth. Everyone has to come up with a design rationale. The mark itself drew mixed reviews; there were plaudits and there were pans. But at the ICI convention, the biggest reaction we heard was, "Is that all?"

Which brings us around, at long last, to the title of this post: Is rebranding really news?

Typically, a logo redesign is of interest largely to internal audiences. The outside world doesn't really care. Of course, the redesign is intended to have an impact on the outside world by changing how the company is perceived, but that's not supposed to be a conscious process. It should happen subliminally. There are always some companies with such high visibility (like Apple) that the general public is interested in its design, but normally the only outsiders who care are other design and marketing professionals. In fact, if you follow this logic, you probably shouldn't even announce your design changes externally, so they can impact the intended audiences without their being aware of it. But few companies would accept such a radical proposition.

A more newsworthy change, in our view, was the concomitant renaming of OppenheimerFunds's institutional division as OFI Global Asset Management. Apparently, the institutional folks got tired of constantly explaining that they aren't a mutual fund company. What they may not realize is they'll spend the rest of their lives explaining that OFI stands for OppenheimerFunds, Inc. That's the problem with initials. (Just ask KFC.)

Of course, what would really be worth announcing would be the separation of OppenheimerFunds into two words with a space between them. But we'll have to keep on waiting for that one.

When it comes to their websites, not very—yet.

We noticed last week that Royce Funds launched a new website using responsive design. By our count, it’s only the second responsive asset management site. We surveyed 70 corporate sites earlier this year, and only Delaware Investments was responsive at the time. 

Responsive design, if you haven’t heard, is a way of coding a site so it responds to the size of your browser window. Whether your visitor is using a desktop computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone, a responsive website will automatically change its layout to deliver the right information, in the right format.

It’s been all the rage in geek circles since it was introduced two years ago. Based on the great job done by Delaware and Royce, and conversations we’ve been having with other asset managers, we think you’ll be seeing lots more of them very shortly. 

Remember those funny ads where someone sat on the "ING bench"? You initially thought ING was just the end of a longer name, but then he/she stood up and it turned out that ING was the whole name itself?

Those name-recognition ads were one way to overcome an awkward name. Now ING has come up with another: get rid of it altogether. 

Of course, the real reason for the name change is that the U.S. insurance/retirement/investment firm is being spun off by its Dutch parent as a separate company through an IPO later this year. But if they can get rid of that albatross of a name at the same time, more power to them!

They've done more than that; they've come up with a fantastic new brand. At the risk of sounding self-serving (full disclosure: ING Investments is a recent client), this is one of the best new names I've seen in a career of branding. Why? It's short, sweet and snappy. It has positive connotations. The whole idea of a "voyage" is a great mental image for a financial services company. And most importantly, it sounds like a real word. Unlike so many artificial-sounding names that companies come up with it, Voya rolls off the tongue. 

They've done something else that's smart, too. So much of the old ING brand is tied up in the color orange, and they've kept that color to maintain as much continuity as possible. Cleverly, they're shifting from name recognition to color recognition in a new ad campaign about "orange money" that will bridge the gap until the new brand is launched next year.

What the hell, I even like the logo. And this photo: the enthusiasm, the sense of voyage, the orange car, and how her v-shaped arms mimic the shape of the V and Y in the logo.

Great job, Voya. 

This week's Forbes had an interesting piece about the central role played by graphic design in the success of Morningstar (via MF Wire):

Joe Mansueto, who founded the business in 1984 in his one-bedroom Chicago apartment, made graphic design a discernible driver in delivering on the company’s initial goal: to simultaneously demystify and enliven mutual fund analysis—with its massively complex, mind-numbing financial data—for individual investors.

Why was this so revolutionary? Industrial design has long been a driver of successful products from cars to smartphones. But the role of graphic design in selling information-based products is something new and different. And as we enter the information-based economy, that role will only continue to grow.

My late partner Arnold Wechsler used to say that when it comes to financial services, the information is the product itself. There's nothing tangible to touch or feel. There are no tires to kick. So you have to distinguish your product by the quality of information and how you present it. Design is often the differentiator.

When I started in this business a few decades ago, hardly anyone other than designers themselves even knew what graphic design was. Today, it seems like practically everyone you meet is a designer. The growth of graphic design has paralleled the growing importance of information in our lives. There's no turning back.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the Orwellian language dreamed up by bureaucrats. Here's my new favorite.

Currently, the SEC and CFTC are locking horns over managed futures mutual funds. The SEC regulates mutual funds and the CFTC regulates commodity trading advisors. The CFTC has been trying for years to extend its dominion over funds that invest in futures. The fund industry isn't exactly thrilled.

"Harmonization" is the word they've chosen to describe their effort at aligning the two regulatory regimes. To me, it looks more like a couple of rutting bull elk fighting over a cow.