The Turnaround Boys

A little-known Manhattan Company named Lippincott & Margulies, Inc. was hired by the Government last week for what seems an impossible task: putting a friendlier face on the Internal Revenue Service. At first L. & M. will simplify the tax forms, rewrite the IRS's standard letters and redesign its office signs--but after that, almost anything can happen. Turned free, L. & M. might design a new shade of ink for tax bills (Affluence Green? Bankrupt Red?), or tell the IRS to change its name to something like Friendly Funding, Inc.

For similar tasks, the firm this year will bill 300 major clients throughout U.S. business about $4,000,000. In the past two weeks, the company has discreetly signed up ten clients that want to find or change their so-called corporate image, including a major glass company, a drug manufacturer, a food manufacturer, and U.S. Steel.

What's in a Name. A combination industrial designer and marketing consultant, 21-year-old L. & M. specializes in what it grandly calls "the corporate turnaround." Its executives believe that a company's image is affected by the most fleeting of public impressions, such as how people react to stationery or employee uniforms. To help create the right impression, L. & M. employs 130 people, including psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists. At the top are easygoing Chairman J. (for Joshua) Gordon Lippincott, 56, onetime product-development teacher at Brooklyn's design-oriented Pratt Institute, and courtly, French-born President Walter Pierre Margulies, 51, onetime chief designer for Statler Hotels. Says Margulies: "Designers in general have too high a taste level. Our aim is to speak the language of the consumer."

L. & M. finds that the consumer has trouble remembering lengthy corporate names and complicated trademarks. For U.S. Rubber, L. & M. conceived the worldwide brand mark "UniRoyal" (the psychologists said that foreign consumers react unfavorably to "U.S. anything"). It rechristened Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. simply "Olin." At the invitation of Chrysler Corp., the designers dropped the dated "Forward Look" slogan, created the company's five-pronged Pentastar emblem, and spread Pentastars across Chrysler's signs and showrooms. Though these outward touches seem minor, many businessmen feel that they help to highlight a company's products and aims.

When Floyd Hall took over low-flying Eastern Air Lines in 1963, one of his first acts was to call for Lippincott & Margulies. They shortened the company name to "Eastern," and devised a new color for its planes and stewardesses' uniforms, "Ionosphere Blue" (something between navy and royal blue). More than that, their researchers questioned 6,000 passengers, found them predictably disenchanted by flight delays, indifferent service, and noise in the planes. Floyd Hall gives L. & M. substantial credit for the fact that Eastern has much improved its service and reduced the noise levels inside the redesigned cabins of its "Whisperjets." Putting in a word for the sponsor, Gordon Lippincott says: "Turnaround programs can only be carried out under a talented and determined manager. Otherwise, it's just a cosmetic job."

Reliable Red, White & Blue. Lately, the turnaround specialists have fashioned a new name for Cities Service Oil Co.--"CitGo"--and switched its corporate colors from green and white to reliable red, white and blue. (Psychologists contend that red connotes strength and vitality; green is too soft.) Now the designing men are working on 16 other "corporate identity programs." Among them: Dun & Bradstreet, General Mills, New York Life Insurance.

In all this work, L. & M. calls upon such satellite companies as Image Research, Inc., and Names, Inc. Perhaps Lippincott & Margulies could use a name change itself. Mail sometimes arrives addressed to Margucott & Lippinlies, and one unguided missive was addressed to Apricot & Hercules.

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