An exploratory trip to Harvard University’s Baker Library that houses the RG Dun & Co and Dun & Bradstreet Collections, dating back to 1841, played a major role in the brand modernisation effort at Dun & Bradstreet, a commercial data and analytics firm.

Within the archives of Dun & Bradstreet’s earliest ledgers and records, the company rediscovered its roots, finding inspiration in its legacy of building trust. As a consequence, a new brand purpose, values, tagline and logo was born.

Rishi Dave, chief marketing officer, Dun & Bradstreet, says the company never approached the campaign as a rebrand, and instead considers the exercise as brand modernisation. “That’s key, because our brand is an outward reflection of all the ways we are modernising the business,” he told BusinessLine .

Data management

With a market capitalisation of $4.5 billion, Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) has information on 240 million businesses across 200 countries in its databases. The financial services and research company has several offices in India.

The company’s new creative expression and tenets are rooted in a data inspired, relationship driven approach, bolstered by the new tagline, ‘Growing relationships through data.’

“We will continue to deliver our data and insights in new ways,” said Dave, who was earlier executive director, digital marketing at Dell. He adds: “Our brand promise ensures that we would be uncovering truth and meaning from data. We have a strong brand, built over 173 years, and a strong user base, but we need to transform the perception of our brand so that people understand how we have grown, what we do today, and what we aim to do in the future,” he said, detailing the strategy of the firm to become a bigger influence on the conversations happening around the business information industry.

Back to basics

Incidentally, US President Abraham Lincoln was an employee of D&B. Pairing the history with the evolving industry landscape, the company set out a creative expression that would bridge the chasm between credit reporting and providing data.

Manhattan based global advertising agency Droga5 was roped in.

“We are in a complex industry that is more vital than ever to the future of business,” continued Dave, discussing the company’s plans to update the D&B brand.

“Droga5 was an unconventional choice. Their work to this point had been consumer facing, and we are their first B2B (business to business) client. We wanted to tap into their ability to bring humanity back into a very data driven environment,” he added.

Droga5 helped focus on the company’s many faceted values: “data inspired, relentlessly curious, and inherently generous.”

D&B has made a number of strategic acquisitions to expand capabilities and formed alliances and partnerships to deliver key data, insights and analytics. About 90 per cent of the Fortune 500 work with D&B.

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