I do recall reading Thames got a bit snotty when it came to promos for Carlton's programming, and Carlton were ultimately forced in the short term to do a lot of it on LWT.
Though when you look at some of the stuff Carlton came out with in the early days, you can almost understand it...
With Carlton's original idents, I sometimes wonder if, had they won the Midlands franchise as well, they would've just used the same people and names, but changed the place names. It's not like people could easily do a double-take with this sort of thing in 1993...
The idents and logo were made by Lambie Nairn, as Carlton’s logo didn’t mean anything nor stuck out. So their logo was solely designed after they won the London weekday licence, the idents followed. There’s a good blog about this on TV Ark’s page for Carlton’s idents between 93 and 95. I remember there was an interview with Brian Ely of LN somewhere online, which sets out the background regarding the creation of that package.
Whilst they never made a bid against Central (they owned 20% by this point anyway), they did bid against Anglia and TVS, it would have been interesting to see how they would have adapted their presentation style if they had won either of these franchises.