Phoenix brands: Plessey

Marketing and social history is awash with well-known, well-loved brands that are now defunct. This is certainly the case in British engineering, with conglomerates such as Vickers, GEC, Ferranti, English Electric and Plessey woven into our collective history.

One of these brands has made a bold comeback. Plessey Semiconductors launched in 2010, producing high-technology components from two plants in the south west. We chatted with Group Marketing Manager Derek Rye about the rebirth of the Plessey brand.

The Plessey logotype remains one of the most recognisable in the UK. It has seen through many notable developments in its time: producing Baird's first TV programmes; manufacturing over 160,000 parts for the war effort; and being responsible for the world's most powerful supercomputers in the 1960s. The 1980s saw the gradual end of the conglomerate, with Plessey plc and GEC spinning out their telecoms business into a joint venture, GPT. The death knell for Plessey plc was sounded when GEC and Siemens formed GEC Siemens plc with the specific intent to acquire Plessey, a hard-fought endeavour which ended successfully in 1989. Most of Siemens' share of Plessey was later bought by BAE Systems and DASA. The remainder held by Siemens became Siemens Traffic Systems, whose employees you may have seen repairing traffic lights on Britain's roads.

The new company started to take shape when last incarnation of the original Plessey Semiconductors company sold its Swindon manufacturing facility to MHS, which quickly got into trouble. A management buy-out led by CEO Michael LeGoff (pictured) in 2009 saved the facility alongside its the IP and product range. A further purchase of a business in Plymouth, owned by German engineering business X-FAB, rounded the new business off. The Plymouth plant was in fact part of the "old Plessey" prior to its acquisition in 2002 by X-FAB, and was opened in 1986 by Prince Charles, who unsurprisingly didn't hold back in his views of the plant's architecture, liking its twin columns joined by a central atrium to a Victorian prison. The conclusion of this work is the reformulation of two former Plessey entities back into one business under the Plessey Semiconductors identity.

Group Marketing Manager Derek Rye acknowledges that although there was an emotional side to the management's decision to reintroduce the brand – as some had worked with the old Plessey business – there was a rational side, too. "In many senses, this was a startup business. It may have taken a long time to become established. If we adopted a name that used to exist and still has a good, solid reputation, then it may allow us to become established more quickly."

The management team managed to negotiate the rights to the name. It was formerly owned worldwide by Plessey South Africa, once part of the GEC-acquired rump and now part of Dimension Data. Rye acknowledges the brand's global impact: "We felt that there was a considerable cachet in the name, and it's one that has been well-known in the industry for many decades. It's known throughout the UK and in large parts of Europe, and into Asia and the Americas as well."

The new business capitalises on the facets that the brand has accrued through its long and complex history: its reputation, its focus on high technology, its depth of design skills, and its connections with private and academic institutions to commercialise research work. For the company's customers, bringing the name back has been welcomed. Rye acknowledges that Plessey's presence at trade exhibitions has been greeted with an almost overwhelming display of warmth and affection. "Probably half the visitors to our exhibitions were just coming along to say 'I used to know Plessey'. But, on the other hand, a there's lot of value there, and there are a lot of warm feelings towards Plessey - 'What are you doing now? What have you got to offer?' It's a name that catches attention. That has been working for us since we reintroduced the brand, and is still working for us today." However, because the business is manifestly different to the one of old, Rye's colleagues sometimes have to politely remind members of the public that inquiries about parts for old Plessey products are difficult to service.

Like its customers, Plessey's employees have also felt the benefits of the brand's reintroduction. Those who once worked for a Plessey business have clearly been delighted to come under the Plessey wing again. Indeed, Rye is of that ilk, working at a number of businesses either owned or once-owned by the old Plessey plc.

The logotypes of the original Plessey business (left), and the new Plessey Semiconductors business (right) 

Work to update the new company's logotype has been light-touch. The new business has retained the core of the Plessey identity – a waveform that looks like the trace from an oscilloscope, known colloquially as the "Plessey squiggle". The name of the business has been incorporated with a contemporary sans serif font, giving an impression that is contemporary but still highly recognisable, and not afraid to appreciate the success of its forefathers.

For a brand that has gone through so much since its creation in London in 1917, this well-loved, visually unmistakable brand has demonstrated considerable resilience. With one eye on a high-tech future and one eye on the successes of its past, there's a new chapter being written in Plessey's history.

Derek Rye is Group Marketing Manager of Plessey Semiconductors. Further information on Plessey Semiconductors can be found at the company's website, on Facebook, and @plesseysemicon.

"Phoenix brands" is part of an occasional series of articles on Imperica. If you know of a brand that we should feature, then please contact us.