The McGrawHill Companies
Signage
Launch
Communicating change
Since its founding over a century ago, The Mc Graw-Hill Companies has evolved from a mere publishing company to a leading technologically sophisticated global information enterprise serving the financial, business, education and consumer communities.
Challenges
The financial community looked upon McGraw-Hill as a domestic print publisher, limiting the appeal of the company’s long term growth prospects and impeding its stock performance
Many customers knew McGraw-Hill only for the particular products or services they used (e.g., Business Week, Standard & Poor’s, F.W. Dodge) but did not have a global understanding of the group
The management of McGraw-Hill realized that they needed to develop an identity strategy and communications plan that would: broaden the image of the parent (from publishing to information content), communicate the link between the parent company and the individual brands, generate enthusiasm among internal audiences about their association with their parent company
Actions
Led research to understand current perception of McGraw-Hill as a group by internal and external audiences
Recommended the development of a separate name and identity for the parent (The McGraw-Hill Companies) in order to clearly separate the group from the publishing company (McGraw-Hill)
Developed an identity nomenclature and set of guidelines (at a business unit level) that would create a link between the parent and the various business brands (e.g., Business Week, Standard and Poor’s)
Designed a communications plan to express the new identity strategy
Helped management implement an image-tracking system to gauge the on-going effectiveness of the identity program