New Holland has a rich history. Founded in 1921, it was acquired by the Sperry Corporation in 1947 to form Sperry-New Holland. In 1947, it purchased Claeys of Belgium. In 1974, the business was purchased by Ford, becoming Ford/New Holland, and later sold to Fiat. To complicate brand issues further, it purchased well-known names O&K and Versatile. The company had grown to be 103,000 employees in 22 countries on 5 continents.

Our mandate was to develop a brand and product architecture, and a subsequent product identification system, for hundreds of products and trusted “brands” around the world. Our research spanned every continent and every product line. A key part of the program was to understand the meaningful brand equities embedded in the array of brands, and help management determine an appropriate structure going forward. Because there were so many over-lapping products with different brand names, the architecture became the basis for product rationalization and corporate streamlining. The global product identification system Vicki Lesser created helped customers understand features and functions of individual products no matter where they were in the world and constituted the first step in migrating customer perceptions over time.