Designer
Sarah Price
Creative Director
Paul Bailes
Client
Personal Finance Society
Date
June 2017
Deliverables
Branding
Experiential
Online
Offline
Brief
In 2009 our client held their inaugural award event for individual financial advisers, and corporate financial planning companies, to promote achievement of Chartered Financial Planner Status among their members. In 2017, they wanted to broaden the event and give it its own identity to separate it from their own brand to promote greater awareness among both the profession itself and also raise overall awareness of the value of seeking professional financial planning advice over and above Chartered Status while still having some link back to themselves.
Think
The Personal Finance Society wanted to elevate the award so that it would be the most coveted of the industry and the decision to change the criteria of the award to beyond ‘members only’ meant that the award itself needed to become more iconic and recognisable to give greater status and gravitas to being a recipient of the award. Therefore this shaped our design approach in developing an iconic trophy and mark.
Design
We looked at what makes an iconic trophy worth winning. We explored shapes and symbols that would resonate not only with those within the industry but that would also be meaningful to the wider public and also stand the test of time. We settled on a £ symbol given it was so closely associated with finance. The shape and material chosen contributed to a very tactile, highly polished award that would grace any recipient’s trophy cabinet.
Create
In order to secure the elevation of the event to become the profession’s award event of the year, we also created supporting material including presentation programmes for the evening itself, printed adverts and animated gifs used in online trade publications; we shot photographs of the awards at angles which enabled us to produce leaflets with a depth of imagery beyond a stock imagery shot and which could be used to created billboard sized advertising for the award evening itself to add to the prestige of the black tie event.
Outcome
By developing and iconic award and brand additional perceived value has been added to the initiative. The event is now seen as the pick of the profession’s awards and has attracted a record number of entries over the last two years since the change in focus.