Bowne

Turning strategies into action

Clients around the world count on Bowne for speed, accuracy and confidence in their communications. They turn to Bowne to create and distribute documents for mergers & acquisitions, IPOs and periodic compliance reports. Bowne has helped its clients succeed through major financial market events such as the Securities Act of 1933 and has been the leading EDGAR filer since the 1980s. Bowne has been a technology and service innovator for more than 230 years, longer than any other company listed on the NYSE. Despite all this success, market perceptions (client, investors and others) positioned Bowne as a commodity printer—a problem since printing is only 20 percent of its business.

This repositioning exercise places Bowne as the center of the changing 24/7, electronic world of financial and marketing communications. In its legacy branding program, Bowne focused more on itself than clients. The company put messages like “the world’s largest” and “the first in the field” on the marquee. Research showed that clients cared little about these features. Instead, they talked of mounting pressures in transaction, compliance and personalized marketing communications. The new positioning puts these client needs and the clients themselves front and center. The program steers Bowne away from the financial print moniker and shows that clients turn to Bowne for a spectrum of important things.