Any brand that grows through acquiring existing companies faces challenges in establishing its new brand consistently and correctly, both in an employee's ability to internalize and deliver, and in the consumer's expectations and impressions. Also, there is the simple challenge of human nature. People don't like disruptions; change is disruptive.

In February 2004, UBS set out to apply one consistent brand across all markets. The result is the You and Us campaign, which strives to convey a close relationship between customers and UBS professionals.

The decision-making involved in finding a one-size-fits-all brand is perhaps best illustrated by the task UBS faced in finding a tagline that could appeal to each of its markets and capture its identity. It is easy to see how "You and Us" can reassure English speakers, essentially saying, "Hey, we're in this together. It's not 'just you' and it's not 'just us.' " However, when translated into other languages the meaning shifts, making things trickier. For instance, in German the phrase would literally translate as "Sie und wir." Using the formal Sie implies there is already a barrier in place between the UBS employee and the client; at the same time, the speaker would never call a client by the informal Du. In fact, this example of translating three small words to carry a consistent message across regions brings to mind another German word: "angst."

"In the attempt to translate the tagline into local languages, what we have found is that you are losing the simplicity and, to a certain extent, the charm of the tagline," says Bernhard Eggli, head of brand management at UBS. After the company conducted internal and external research, the decision was made to preserve the intent of the You and Us tagline by leaving it in English.

This tagline strategy neatly encapsulates UBS's overall goal of keeping the brand identity consistent. "What we found during the research is that there's a lot of similarity in terms of the expectations that our client segments have for their preferred financial services provider, which made it possible for us to move to a single brand," says Eggli. "The underlying brand promise works across the globe; the challenge is to find the right execution."

Obviously the execution of a successful global brand identity is much more complicated than deciding on formal or informal German pronoun conjugations. Done well, every touchpoint of the brand is in line. To the man on the street, this is most visible in areas such as retail outlets, communications and customer service. Less visible but just as important is how the company internalizes and "lives" the brand identity.

Perceptions of scale feature large in UBS's external communications campaign for the You and Us identity. For instance, in one print ad, a huge room is vast and empty except for two men huddled in discussion. The space could be perceived as impersonal and imposing, but the two men coupled with the You and Us tagline humanizes the story, placing the customer at the heart of the employee's focus. The world is big and imposing, but together we can make it.

Robin Rusch is Editor-in-Chief of brandchannel.com.