The original sketch of the Citi logo, appropriately on a napkin, by Paula Scher (of Pentagram) in 1998.

Citi has announced that it will finally unite under the brand suggested by Pentagram nine years ago. For some this may not be news, but in the slow moving world of Finance not everything is so simple. It has taken a while to realize that a unified brand may make more sense, and even now it is contested, but as the CEO said, "It is how most of our clients think about us already."

The blandness of this announcement is actually a tribute to the deftness with which it was carried off. Instead of an overnight overhaul or a trumpet blasting announcement party, the Citigroup slowly and surely made moves towards the use of the new name and logo until, inevitably, it was the name and logo.

The tension at Citi over the logo was primarily internal. Investment bankers didn't want to be confused with those people who rolled coins at the local branch, and Smith Barney's hotshots felt like they needed to distance themselves from Travelers Insurance. But this internal strife had no bearing on how the firm was seen from the outside. The four letter catchy "Citi" was all that was needed to communicate "money" and "trust" to most - even larger - customers.

This will hardly be the last brand overhaul for Citi. The company is in a somewhat strained condition following allegations of Todd Thompson's ties to CNBC's Maria Bartiromo and after its private bank got kicked out of Japan. There has been a management shakeup as a result, with Sallie Krawcheck effectively accepting a demotion from CFO to the head of the Wealth Management Division.

In an effort to get the kids to play nice, Charles Prince (the CEO) has been trumpeting one culture and one name for over two years. As the soap opera I have recounted above shows, a new brand may not really solve anything. The core issues with Citi all have to do with the fact that its cost base is expanding quicker than its revenue growth. Details for cost cutting will no doubt be announced soon.

The original migration strategy (below) as design in 1998 was considerably slower, and planned to have everything transferred by 2012.

As pentagram's site says, "Working with consultant Michael Wolff, Pentagram’s recommendation was to unify the merged entity under a single, four letter name—Citi—and to adopt a logo that would transform the Travelers’ red umbrella into an arc over the letter “t.” (Not only is that letter Travelers’ initial, but it also is one of the few letters that looks like an umbrella handle!)"

The London and New York offices of pentagram went to great lengths to show Citigroup that this logo conversion would work, including mockups and demonstrations of how it would operate.