News & Events

Franklin Lakes, NJ (August 18, 1999) -- For over 100 years, Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX), one of the world's leaders in medical technology and healthcare, has provided products and services that are literally "indispensable to human health." Today, the company revealed a bold master brand strategy that promotes the familiar "BD" name as a global corporate asset, along with a new symbol designed to become as universally recognized worldwide as the Red Cross.

The move is a culminating step in what has been a sweeping, multi-year organizational and cultural transformation of BD from a controlled hierarchy to a decentralized, swift and adaptive organization focused on fulfilling its mission "to help all people live healthy lives."

"Our goal is to build on BD's important market position to become widely understood as the organization best known for eliminating unnecessary suffering and death from disease," said Clateo Castellini, chairman and CEO. "The transformation is helping to unlock the full value of our considerable global capabilities, fostering greater product innovation and cross-organizational collaboration, and involving everyone in the corporation as we seek aggressive new means to meet expanding healthcare needs around the world."

Research conducted by identity consultants, Lippincott & Margulies, revealed that adopting BD as a master brand would dramatically increase global recognition and build equity in the marketplace. Instead of marketing independent brands with little or no connection to the parent company, the name BD will now appear in association with the company's broad array of services and well known product brands, including ACE® bandages, VACUTAINER® blood collection systems, TRU-FIT® support products and BD hypodermic devices.

"Our name is our greatest asset, but it has been underutilized. We have a tremendous opportunity to fortify marketplace impressions of our company simply by leveraging these highly regarded brands and linking them more closely to the BD corporate name. In time, the BD master brand will be inextricably tied to the notion of indispensable healthcare," added Castellini.

This new singular focus on the BD brand was a direct outgrowth of BD's transformation, according to President Ed Ludwig, and will play a key role in the company meeting a number of ambitious objectives. These include increasing sales from new products and businesses to 25 percent of total revenues, and improving total quality, as defined by customers, by 20 percent a year.

BD's ultimate transformation goal aims high, said Ludwig. "We want to double the number of people touched by BD products and services throughout the world, and make major contributions to the advancement of healthcare. BD's new brand strategy is a major step in that direction. The companies that have created significant shareholder value and that we all admire are, invariably, companies that recognize and manage corporate image as an asset," he said.

Communicating a Transformed BD

At the center of BD's new master brand strategy is a new logo rendered in non-traditional corporate colors of blue and orange selected to send a bold message that BD is a transformed company. A new corporate tagline, Indispensable to human health, underscores the company's positioning and came about as a direct result of input from BD customers in the healthcare community.

Completing the new identity is a distinctive symbol of a human form with hands outstretched to the horizon, which is indicative of BD's forward looking, hopeful vision of a future in which its products and services help all people live healthy lives.

Lippincott & Margulies created the new identity to align BD's image with the reality of its far-reaching influence on global health, and to heighten the awareness and understanding of the company among consumers. "BD's new brand strategy is an essential part of the company's efforts to help customers choose BD over competitors as they consolidate supply sources and seek to do business with true global leaders like BD," said Kimberly J. Rendleman, senior partner of Lippincott & Margulies.

"With a more clearly articulated global brand presence, the speed and effectiveness with which BD enters into new healthcare markets will be greatly facilitated, and a powerful BD identity will have an impact on the company's ability to raise capital, attract and retain the most talented people, develop business with new customers, interest joint venture partners and instill in its employees the knowledge that the company they work for is well known and well regarded," she said.

Becton, Dickinson and Company remains the company's registered, legal name.

About BD
Headquartered in Franklin Lakes, NJ, BD is a leader in the design and delivery of indispensable healthcare devices, services and diagnostic systems for use by healthcare professionals, medical research institutions and the general public worldwide.

About Lippincott & Margulies
Founded in 1945, Lippincott & Margulies is credited with having pioneered the practice of corporate and brand identity, and image management consulting. The firm, part of the Mercer Consulting Group, operates globally from its headquarters in New York City, and other offices in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Recent programs include AT&T, Cendant, Citigroup, Humana, IBM, RadioShack and Sprint.