Wally Olins
BORN LONDON DECEMBER 19, 1930. DIED LONDON APRIL 14, 2014. AGED 83
AMAN of brilliant, clashing colours – bow ties and checked s h i r t s whic h p e r f e c t l y matched his vivid, innovative ideas – Wally Olins was the poster boy for the branding industry.
In defiance of his critics he believed that branding was something of a higher order, a virtual religion, offering a holistic message to marketing, PR and design consultants.
One of the leading exponents of the art of persuasion, Olins held that anything with distinctive appeal was a definable brand.
It was what made this sharp-eyed, straight-spoken individual with the satirical smile and look of “surprise me” the father of corporate identity and planning. He became famous for the Olins makeover with boardrooms seeking to make a difference.
Olins founded his agency Olins with Michael Wolff in 1965 and is best known for his entry into the mobile phone industry with a £50 million rebranding of British Telecom into BT with its prancing piper, replaced in 2003 with another Olins original slogan, Connected World. Orange followed with The Future’s Bright; the Future’s Orange, and the transformation of Industrial & Commercial Finance Corporation into 3i.
Olins’ work was essentially based not on gimmickry but strategic plan- ning and cultural values. The fusion of Wolff’s creativity and Olins’ intellect and flair for selling proved dynamite during the 18 years of their partnership. Their clients included London Weekend Television, the Beatles’ company Apple, British Oxygen, Cunard, English Electric, Renault and the Metropolitan Police.
In the first of his seven books, The Corporate Personality: An Inquiry into the Nature of Corporate Identity, published in 1978, he was already looking beyond the boardroom and conference podium. The idea would not sell itself alone, he reasoned, but demanded innovative practice and imaginative input from the CEOs as well.
The book draws on the symbolism of the ancient world to modern international cultural contrasts. Its style is free of the usual adworld jargon, and therefore refreshing. His books have been translated into 18 languages..
Wallace Ollins was the son of Rachel Muscovitch and Alfred Olins, a road haulage operator whose Jewish ancestors had fled the pogroms in Russia and came to Britain in the 1880s. After Highgate School he read history in St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he met his future wife Renate Steinert. They married in 1957.
National Service with the Army in Germany preceded five years in Bombay with Ogilvy and Mather which stimulated a life-long love of India, and where he came to see organisations as having their own distinct identity. Back in London he joined the now defunct agency Geers Gross and met architect and designer Michael Wolff, with whom he launched his agency. Some ideas proved controversial. In the 1990s the Labour government sought the agency’s help with its image, but cooled off over Cool Britannia.
However, undeterred he considered expanding consumer branding to countries, too.
In 1997 he turned his Midas touch to re-shaping the monarchy. Though it proved resistant to his persuasive tactics, he had better luck with Poland, whose Chamber of Commerce wanted him to modernise the national image.
Olins, who saw himself as something of a left-wing trendy, fought hard to project Poland as an unusual country of “creative boisterousness” with his book, A Brand for Polska. But he was out in the cold again when the Polish 2005 election ushered in a right wing government led by the Kacyzynski twins Jaroslaw and Lech.
His believed branding made an individual feel part of a group, which was why people paid large sums to own brand names. Olins acknowledged this involved a degree of deception.
But in the late 20th century branding practices seemed mostly concerned with design, and critics concentrated on the superficial image, ignoring the underlying strategy. In 1999 Olins was appointed CBE. In 2001 the American advertising leviathan Omnicom bought out his company to the tune of £30 million. But rather than retire he joined the Spanish-based consultancy Saffron as chairman. More books followed, including Brand New: The Shape of Brands to Come, published this year by Thames and Hudson, and Wally Olins; On Brand in 2004. They reflect his view that branding had no limits and had virtually taken the place of religion in an era where there was “some kind of a spiritual vacuum”.
A visiting professor at business schools around the world, he received many awards including the Royal Society of Arts’ Bicentenary Medal in 2000. ents and beautiful mind. His first marriage ended in divorce and he married Dornie Watts in 1990.
He is survived by Dornie, their daughter and two sons and a daughter of his first marriage.