Our Brand

The 1960s

Cooperative Credit: a symbol representing our values

Around the 1960s, Credito Cooperativo felt the need to create a symbol capable of identifying it and expressing its rich cultural heritage and values. The symbol thus developed was the interlocked double C, a stylised rendering of the links of a solid chain that recalls the ideals of solidarity, collaboration and active interdependence between the components of a system.

This image has a long history: the double C can be found in decorations from pre-Columbian times, in ancient Greece, in some Roman villas and as an iconographic image in early proto-Christian and Christian communities (for example in the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova or the basilica of Aquileia).

In the Christian matrix of our identity, inspired by the social doctrine of the church, the double C refers to “King Solomon's knot” and represents a Gordian knot, i.e. a knot that cannot be undone and therefore a symbol of solidarity, mutual support and closeness to the communities it serves.

2022

Launch of the Group’s new brand

In many respects the establishment of the Iccrea Cooperative Banking Group represented a momentous event for cooperative credit.

As part of the many transformation projects initiated, special attention was paid to the development of a new Group brand.

It was necessary to create a new symbol capable of boosting and solidifying the sense of belonging of all the Group's components, with the aim of effectively combining the positioning of local cooperative banks with the value of a large national group: the traditional advantages of a local cooperative bank, close to the needs of the local community, are strengthened by the support of a large Group. Our new brand needed to convey this concept.

With this in mind, the main objective of the project was above all to create a clear, immediate identity between the Group and the BCCs, and to this end a Working Group was formed, made up of people from all the components of the Iccrea Cooperative Banking Group, because we wanted to achieve a result that reflected a variety of views, skills, needs and regions.

Subsequently, a competition was organised involving some of the top creative firms, leading to the decision to redesign the traditional BCC logo in a modern font combined with the Solomon's knot (the double C), which has been the main focus of the cooperative credit institution’s investments in terms of communication over the last 20 years. This seemed the most obvious choice and the most coherent expression of our new identity.