The largest privately run industrial gases specialist introduces new corporate claim – “Gases for Life”.

Behind the German brand ‘Messer’ lies the world’s largest privately run industrial gases specialist – Messer Group GmbH – based in Bad Soden am Taunus and led by owner Stefan Messer. Messer now wants to clarify its business purpose and corporate culture with a new corporate claim: “Messer - Gases for Life” will support all of this traditional company’s means of communication from 2012 onward.

“Gases for Life” is supposed to demonstrate this family company’s diversity and how it acts in a responsible manner. Through an advertising campaign developed by Bensheim-based advertising agency Hübner & Sturk, Messer primarily wants to give industrial enterprises and the public at large an understanding of the application of gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, helium, xenon and carbon dioxide, showing them where the invisible helpers are hiding. Messer, also owner of the brand “Messer Griesheim”, thus wants to enhance the recognition value of the blue-red word and figurative trade mark, which has hitherto been visible – primarily to the company’s customers – on white road tankers, gas tanks at customer sites or gas cylinders. At the same time, Messer wants “Gases for Life“ to become a product brand and a generic concept for gases.

English was chosen as the claim language. This facilitates global use of the claim across all of the Group’s subsidiaries. The message is easily comprehensible thanks to the simple choice of words. Claim and brand blend into a new corporate logo.

Messer reveals the secret of the hidden helpers
Gases play the same role as water and electricity in many industrial production processes. They become visible as effervescent bubbles in beverages – but they are also hidden in many products such as consumer goods and appliances. Potato crisps packaged under a protective inert gas atmosphere, xenon headlights and krypton torches are obvious examples – but gases are also used in the production of paper, ice cream, wind turbines, cars and airbags, for example, as well as tiles, ceramics and taps. Messer wants to use the advertising campaign to highlight and explain the areas in which “Gases for Life“ are used. Hübner & Sturk have created advertisements that feature everyday situations such as a mother and child having breakfast or a bookworm relaxing on a couch, and which make the gases in products such as rolls, newspapers and sofas visible. Red circles with the respective chemical symbols of the gases used indicate where they are hidden.

Why “Messer” and not “Messer Griesheim”?
Messer was founded back in 1898 in Frankfurt am Main. In 1965, the family company merged with Frankfurt-based chemicals giant Hoechst AG and was part of the group until 2001, trading under the name Messer Griesheim. Following a three-year restructuring phase, Stefan Messer, the founder’s grandson, successfully reacquired and reprivatised the whole of the Messer company. In order to finance this, Stefan Messer had to, among other things, sell the German business, Messer Griesheim, in 2004, followed by further expansion of the European and Asian business under the Messer brand in subsequent years. Messer has been back in the German market since 2008, selling gases for industry, research, science and medicine, which are produced and filled in Siegen since 2009 and in Salzgitter since 2010. The Messer trade mark, a blue logo with a red circle enclosing three white triangles – called the Messer “boat”, was introduced internationally in 1996. The “boat” has been in use since 1964.