I've initiated a global identity rebranding effort for my company, and as a starting point, my team has completed some industry and competitive research. We found some interesting, although not unexpected, results, which I thought would be good to share. As we pretty much knew before we set out on this initiative, there are really two main color ranges that are used in Enterprise Software and Consulting brands...the "blue" (think IBM) and the "red" (think Oracle). The background graphic, which was a great visual tool for our CEO & Board, was developed to prove this point.

Pretty much everyone else in these categories have used slight variations...sometimes going as "bold" as adding a highlight color like Cognizant did with the green shadow of their "C" or WiPro's rainbow effect. A standardized industry look is expected, though. Can you imagine SAP marketing themselves like a "bling bling" consumer brand would? For us, the main objective is to be perceived as "Enterprise scale" and "Mature" so that we can more easily assure our prospects that our solutions are as well.

Walk around London's Covent Garden, however, and you'll immediately see how effective bold brands work in the Retail industry...the yellow Selfridges bags, the purple Liberty bags, and the turquoise Tiffany's bags. Bag envy everywhere.

Is Enterprise Software and Consulting ready for similar boldness? With "nontraditional" branding from companies like Salesforce.com ("No Software") and with Web2.0 companies like 37Signals shaking things up, I'd say we're moving the needle a bit. The question is how far are we willing to go?