Visa Processing Services is the corporate home of VisaNet, the world’s leading processing system. VisaNet processes more than 100 million transactions every day around the world.

To position this key Visa asset for the future and reduce confusion about how products and services relate to each other, the Russell Mark Group developed a simple, functional naming system that organizes all the processing offerings and sets out guidelines for future naming.

After making a number of acquisitions, this leading computer security company had accumulated a tangle of brands, unclear brand relationships, and non-descriptive names that stood in the way of its sales efforts.

The Russell Mark Group cleaned up the McAfee system by retiring most product brands and moving the company toward a “masterbrand” system that strengthens the corporate brand and relies on simple, descriptive product names.

Carnegie Mellon is a global research university recognized around the world for its outstanding arts and technology programs. The university is consistently top-ranked for the quality of its faculty and programs.

With the goal of bringing more consistency to its public presence, the university turned to the Russell Mark Group to create a brand architecture for its schools and colleges and detailed guidelines for a refined identity system. The new system standardizes how the university refers to its schools and colleges and uses its well-recognized logo.

With its roots in web filtering, computer security leader Websense needed a naming system that would help the company move beyond its best-known offerings into new areas. The company was also aggressively acquiring companies to build out its porfolio and needed to determine which names to keep and which to change.

The Russell Mark Group  helped Websense move away from its confusing legacy product names toward a more consistent naming approach appropriate for an emerging industry leader. The simpler system also provided an easier path for new acquisitions.

Co-founded by a Nobel-Prize-winning economist, Financial Engines provides retirement help for employees enrolled in 401(K) plans. The company manages over $20 billion in retirement assets.

The company’s official product names were so confusing that they were not used, leading to “rogue naming”—clients and salespeople alike used alternatives they had developed themselves. The Russell Mark Group created simple, easily distinguishable product names for the company’s main offerings and built a foundation for future naming as the company develops new products.

For this premium health care provider, the Russell Mark Group developed a naming system to clarify its names and place the spotlight on its most important products.

The name Shield Spectrum was developed for its lead product, the PPO. The presence of “Shield” in the name helps distinguish the company from Blue Cross. Russell Mark also developed names for the POS (Added Advantage) and consumer choice product (Active Choice) and created guidelines for future naming.

Hill-Rom is a respected leader in medical equipment with a rich, 75-year history. Over a million Hill-Rom hospital beds are in use around the world.

The company wanted to better position itself for the future by focusing on its corporate brand and less on its product brands, which had become difficult to manage and support.  The Russell Mark Group helped the company move to an alpha-numeric system of product naming, where product relationships are easy to understand and new product names are easy to add. 

America’s largest not-for-profit health maintenance organization, Kaiser Permanente called upon the Russell Mark Group to develop a naming system for its core products to bring clarity and consistency to its offerings across all markets.

The naming system is based on the simple, descriptive names that are preferred in this highly complex industry, helping maintain a strong overall brand for Kaiser Permanente.

The largest privately held software company in the world, SAS Institute is the global leader in business intelligence software and services.

The Russell Mark Group designed a naming system for SAS that organizes its dozens of offerings into a coherent system, supporting the company’s move toward solutions marketing. Russell Mark also developed guidelines for future naming to keep the system strong and its names clear and consistent.

A pioneer Application Service Provider (ASP), Corio turned to the Russell Mark Group to bring discipline and consistency to its brand. We provided a series of visualizations showing how the Corio brand could be organized and worked with the company to bring a single architecture forward for common agreement throughout the company. Corio was acquired by IBM in early 2005.

The Russell Mark Group helped VeriFone, the leader in secure electronic payment technologies, “visualize” the name relationships among its products and services by developing a chart showing current naming practices. Some naming conventions were apparent but were not used in a consistent way.

The Russell Mark Group then created a set of guidelines to provide a road map for naming future offerings quickly and cost effectively.