Irish Stock Exchange brand identity

The Irish Stock Exchange's vision is to be the leading European specialist exchange business and the most agile market operator for, and in partnership with, Irish and international capital market participants. We have created a comprehensive brand identity system for the Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) designed to support their key strategic objectives.

Daryl Byrne, Head of Strategy Planning & Brand at ISE says "BFK understood the complex strategic issues at the heart of our branding brief and distilled those into a powerful, consistent and flexible identity system that equips us to deliver greater consistency in all of our interactions with our customers and stakeholders, and facilitates our business development objectives."

The centrepiece of the new brand identity system is our updated brand mark which presents a modern face for an organisation with over one hundred years of history. We have given more emphasis to the ISE name and we have redefined the castle element from within the existing crest as the basis for the new modernised crest symbol.

Our new brand identity system also unites the previously disparate identities of the ISE's three markets under a unified brand architecture. The markets were renamed and rationalised as part of the branding project. Their new marks strongly associate them with ISE and better communicate the breadth of the exchange's offering.

In what is a rarity now, this new brand identity is not being rolled out on a phased basis. Everything is being switched over on Monday 10 May 2010. Our project management expertise and processes ensured that over 140 discrete rebranded instances (everything from signage to stationery) were completed on schedule.

All thirteen of the ISE's listing rule books have been redesigned and republished. Initially, they will be the most prominent examples of the new ISE brand patterns––a unique suite of visual iconography that forms an integral part of the new corporate identity system.

We have created a comprehensive suite of over eighty digital documents and forms. All of the various forms used by ISE clients now share common layout conventions, consistent structures and visual appearance. We enhanced the implementation of this suite of documents with on-site training for the relevant ISE personnel, giving them confident ownership of the digital assets they will be managing.

We also wrote and produced a detailed brand management publication that records all of the decisions taken to date and gives guidance on how to implement the ISE brand identity system in the future.