Archive for October 29th, 2009

Face Brands Coming Back

29th October
2009
written by Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross

Earlier in the week, an article on who will succeed Bruce Wasserstein at Lazard Ltd. talked about the difficulty of replacing someone so intellectually adept and dynamic. I found it particularly interesting when someone was quoted as saying that it was no accident that leading investment banking firms followed the “faceless brand” model. Certainly there is a case to be made for the collective over the individual but we are now starting to see another shift in light of the horrific past 18 months. You could not say now that JPMorgan Chase is faceless (Jamie Dimon) and from recent reports, Goldman Sachs is starting to draw a face on its brand with its CEO. There have been several articles about burnishing Goldman Sach’s image with its CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Just last weekend in a New York Times’ article by Joe Nocera, there was a focus on Blankfein’s comments at a Fortune event. So it seems that the theory of putting a face on the brand to humanize it and strengthen reputation among key stakeholders might be coming back in vogue. My, how some things come around.

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