BelfiusCopied

Few rebrands are as plainly defensive as this one. Dexia Bank Belgium was being separated from the Dexia group, and every time the Dexia holding made bad headlines, chief executive Jos Clijsters told De Morgen, the bank felt it in its customers' behaviour. A new name, he said, was self evident; the confusion around the Dexia holding had to end. L'Avenir reported that the aim was to avoid any confusion and reassure customers during the dismantling of the group.

The name leaked the evening before, and the logo was revealed on 1 March 2012 at a press conference and on the bank's official Facebook page. L'Avenir described it as a white equals sign on a burgundy square, beside a rounded typeface in grey. Clijsters said the bank wanted a simple logo that was easy to recognise, and told De Morgen the goal was to look modern and simple, without arrogance or showiness; he also pointed to how well it worked on smartphones and tablets. According to L'Avenir, 4,073 unique proposals were examined, 130 studied in detail and five shortlisted. A spokesperson explained that Bel stands for Belgium, Fi for finance and Us for the English word.

Clijsters wanted a clean break with the past, a name easy to pronounce in all of Belgium's national languages and easy to remember, supporting a relationship bank with local roots. The whole rebrand was budgeted at about 35 million euros over two years and fully provisioned. De Morgen laid out the rollout: the website switched immediately, Club Brugge players would wear the new colours that Sunday, branches would get stickers from Easter, and the full rebranding of offices and debit and credit cards would run from June to the end of the year. Clijsters shrugged off negative reactions on Twitter, saying market research had found no negative connotation.

The equals sign is the smartest part: a bank built on a bailout promising fairness and balance in one glyph. The name is clumsier, a constructed acronym that sounds like a pharmaceutical, and internet users promptly mocked it as a yoghurt culture. But the job here was distance, not poetry. Belfius needed to stop being dragged down by somebody else's crisis, and on that measure the clean, sober identity did what it was paid for.