New York, NY, June 26--DuPont Co. wants to show the softer side of its old industrial self, hiring a famed ad agency to remind the public it is more than just a chemical company.
The second-largest U.S. chemical firm, which began as a 19th-century gunpowder works, wants to strengthen its reputation as a maker of materials for countertops, envelopes and nonstick frying pans.
Last month, the company took a major step toward that goal by hiring ad agency Ogilvy & Mather to handle its $75 million account, which includes products like Tyvek home wrap and Teflon coating.
Ogilvy will run all of DuPont's public relations and advertising within the next nine months, the first time one firm has had sole control of the company's public image. The move comes as the company clamps down on costs by cutting jobs and consolidating amid a three-year chemical slump.
The idea is to promote a more consistent image and get more ad bang for its buck.
"Our goal is not to be positioned as a chemical company," said Kathleen Forte, DuPont's vice president of global public affairs. DuPont should be a firm "that consumers can readily identify with."
A clear, uniform image gives investors, customers and the general public the reassurance a company has its act together, according to ad experts. That can boost investment and prevent a company from being seen in too narrow a light, in DuPont's case, as simply a chemical company.
"Reading between the lines, they're trying to get a message across that they make a lot more than chemicals," said John Lister of Lister Butler Consulting, a brand identity consulting firm in New York. "What they make doesn't have the scary overtones that people might associate with chemicals."
DuPont is banking on Ogilvy, which is known as the thinking man's advertiser. Its reputation is for long campaigns that try to reshape long-held beliefs, said advertising experts.
The new image is one the Wilmington, Delaware-based company, which invented popular products such as nylon and Lycra, has tried to boost since 1999, when it reintroduced itself as "The Miracles of Science" company.
"How do we capitalize on the fact that we're a science company and how do we translate that into people's lives?" was DuPont's current goal, Forte told Reuters.
"We have a fairly fragmented face and voice in the marketplace," acknowledged Forte, who said "scores" of firms had run DuPont's advertising, including Saatchi & Saatchi, Young & Rubicam Inc., and McCann-Erickson.
Ogilvy's past campaigns include the "man with the black eye patch," the odd but dapper icon that made Hathaway shirts famous. The firm also handled accounts for IBM and Shell Oil, sprawling companies that wanted to change their image.
"I think the word chemical has a very negative connotation in American life," said Jack Myers, publisher of the Jack Myers Report, an ad industry newsletter. "We associate it with pollution and unnecessary evil."
Chemical companies like W.R. Grace and Co. and Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical, made headlines in the 1980s for toxic leaks and water pollution. DuPont is currently fighting charges that a chemical in Teflon is toxic.
"Traditionally, many industrial companies like DuPont have paid short shrift to effective branding in the belief that their audiences are simply other businesses," said Lister. "It's a fallacy ... a company has an image whether it likes it or not and what (DuPont's) doing is setting out to effectively manage that image."
