Aligning Bain Capital’s brand strategy with success

Since its founding in 1984, Bain Capital has applied a unique combination of insight and experience to build one of the world’s leading private multi-asset investment firms. Over time, Bain Capital has organically expanded its platform to include numerous asset classes while also establishing a significant global presence.

In light of its accomplishments, Bain Capital leadership realized a need to formally define a brand strategy — one that could powerfully articulate the values at the core of the firm’s success and also serve as a uniting story for its businesses. So, they came to Lippincott.

Our research with Bain Capital’s employees, external partners and investors revealed a clear and consistent thread: Virtually everyone associated with the firm recognized that culture was at the heart of what makes Bain Capital unique. Regardless of business, geography or tenure, the way the organization thinks, works and treats people is what makes it different. The insight underlying this finding was striking. Bain Capital’s brand was already embedded throughout the organization, but it had never been fully expressed.

A key recommendation was to unite all the independent business units under a new brand architecture that supports Bain Capital as the parent brand, unifying the firm under a shared expression, leveraging both the name and the stature of the firm. Business units under the Bain Capital parent brand umbrella are: Private Equity, Credit, Public Equity, Ventures, Real Estate, Double Impact, Life Sciences, Partnership Strategies, Tech Opportunities and Insurance.

Collaborating with internal teams, we created a new identity to unite the businesses through an ownable, shared symbol. Its connected forms speak to how Bain Capital pulls together the right people and pieces to make an impact. The forward-facing beam illuminates the way forward. Its colors celebrate the brand’s heritage, with a modernized blue and distinctive red that pay homage to the firm’s history. The new visual system integrates elements of the symbol to create a distinctive Bain Capital expression across print and digital channels.

This successful collaboration yielded the creation of a refreshed parent brand with the flexibility to address individual audiences, capabilities and the unique characteristics of each Bain Capital business. In combination with a new brand architecture, logo, visual system and guidance, Lippincott helped bring to life a Bain Capital brand that expresses the firm’s stellar reputation and supports its continuing efforts always to create lasting impact.