Arch Communications Group Inc. introduced its new national brand name, Arch Paging, created to unify the company’s many acquired operations and punctuate its position as a national player in the paging market.
On May 1, the Westborough, Mass., company will start using the Arch name in all of its paging properties-including a host of acquired companies that to date retain different brand names. Arch is the company’s original name, adopted from the Boston street location where it was founded in 1986.
“Operating under several brand names has limited prior efforts to convey consistent messages through all types of communications,” said Ed Baker, Arch’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Now, with a single identity, we can communicate far more effectively across the entire country, and, in doing so, become a more recognized and formidable player in each of our markets.”
Along with the national brand name, Arch is introducing a new corporate logo and positioning itself as a company that provides a high level of customer service. The company’s new tag line is, “A more personal paging company.” The new logo shows the word “Arch,” in a box, with an arc above the “A”. In the company’s 1996 annual report, Arch is written in black on an orange background. These colors will be used interchangeably depending on the product or marketing collateral.
The company is keeping its original brand name because it is a short, real word that is easy to spell and pronounce. Arch also conveys a connection between two points and a structural soundness and solid foundation, said the company. The arc in the logo is designed to suggest imagery of radio waves.
The new identity and positioning campaign was a cooperative effort among Arch, Lippencott & Margulies, a New York-based corporate identity firm, and the Richards Group, a Texas-based advertising firm. The companies conducted focus groups nationwide with paging users, non-users and industry experts, said Arch. Also, the firms reviewed thousand of names and more than 200 graphic designs in conjunction with the identity study.
Arch, which has completed 34 acquisitions since its inception, today supports about 3.3 million paging customers. The push for a new nationwide identity was launched about a year ago, following the acquisitions of USA Mobile Communications Inc. and Westlink Holdings Inc., which account for about 1 million and 475,000 subscribers, respectively. Arch currently operates under about 16 different brands, noted Bob Lougee, vice president of investor relations.
Arch will be communicating with many of its customers by phone and through mailings to help familiarize them with the Arch name. “USA had a sizable number of subscribers who were very much aware of that brand in that marketplace. We have to be sensitive this,” added Lougee.
Narrowband personal communications services licensees Conxus Communications Inc., of which Arch owns 10 percent, and Benbow PCS Ventures, of which Arch owns 49 percent, will retain their own names.
