Financial Services Enhanced by Intuition
Brief Case Study: InvestorCOM Inc.
A financial services brand that’s responsive, nimble, and fuelled by intuition.
Founded in 1992, InvestorCOM is a leader in providing financial technology and outsourcing services to banks, asset managers, insurance companies, and investment dealers. The firm has developed an innovative suite of FinTech solutions in response to increasing regulation and to meet the demand for more effective client communication and disclosure from the financial services industry.
CASCO worked with InvestorCOM to develop a brand strategy and expression to convey personalized customer service, innovation, and business growth.
Challenge
Already a highly successful firm, InvestorCOM recently formulated an ambitious business strategy to further their growth. However, leadership recognized that only with a stronger brand platform would they be able to realize their newly established business goals.
They were facing a series of brand challenges surrounding such key issues as the lack of consensus on the brand’s value proposition. As a result, marketing and sales initiatives were not consistent across departments, delivering mixed messaging.
Their quality content-filled presentations imparted knowledge and insights, and provided plenty of value to their audience. However, with no brand guidelines to follow, there was a disconnect among all pieces. The opportunity to convey a message of “in-house financial industry compliance knowledge and deep understanding of financial products and services to better meet the needs of our clients” was being missed.
Moreover, marketing materials were being produced by a variety of sales and marketing leads who catered to their own unique tastes, often with “off brand” results. There was no toolbox of resources to provide cohesive guidelines for facilitating dynamic and customized marketing elements that met the needs of the sales and business development initiatives.
CASCO was engaged to help address the missing brand cohesion and secure internal buy-in on the potential for refreshing the brand to take the organization to the next level.
Solution
With InvestorCOM’s business strategy in mind, we started by defining the key business objectives to work towards.
Interviews with internal and external stakeholders helped us learn that personal business relationships forged over many years had been fundamental to InvestorCOM’s success.
With these insights, a unique value proposition began to take shape: professional expertise and business intuition that have been acquired through many years of experience. We also learned that innovative thinking is key for InvestorCOM and has undoubtedly contributed to their success.
We set out to explore creative ways to convey credibility and trust. We also had to ensure a sense of security, accuracy, and quality in the delivery of services, with the clear purpose of helping clients meet compliance needs through digital transformation. We accomplished this through the use of a butterfly image which comes to life as it aligns with the organization’s unique differentiators, evoking transformation, innovation, nimbleness, and responsiveness, as well as the resilience required to thrive in the financial markets for the long term.
“We weren’t looking for a deep strategic planning exercise, but we knew something was missing. Diego and Lauren skillfully led us through a creative process to a place we wouldn’t have reached on our own, bringing a new life and focus to our brand.”
The new direction pulls together graphic elements from the existing wordmark, enabling us to create visual tools to bring structure and consistency to all marketing elements. The butterfly imagery was customized so that various sequences can be employed to provide flexibility of presentation, with this unique creature thus increasingly associated with the brand. In flight or motionless, the butterfly suggests action and adaptation, but also stability and friendliness. Blue continues to be the brand’s primary colour, but a supplementary palette brings warmer colours into the mix to soften the image. The new brand platform is adaptable and expressive. New patterns overlayed on select stock photography provide dynamic possibilities for various media uses.
“We challenged the CASCO team to develop a platform that would tie our identity, our brand, and our diverse products together. It was clear they knew what they were doing as they tactfully guided us from getting in our own way to a vision that is fuelling our brand and communications with new energy and clarity.”
Curated messaging resonates with the firm’s sophisticated audience, and is presented in a serif font which helps convey InvestorCOM as financial services experts and portrays the firm as established and approachable.
CASCO developed a comprehensive branding package that encompasses brand strategy, identity design, stationery, sales collateral, and presentation materials.