REBRAND:

Raising the Standards of the Advisory Sector

CLIENT:

Advisory Board Centre

LOCATION:

Brisbane, QLD

The Advisory Board Centre is the leading professional body for the advisory sector. They educate, certify and connect business leaders to maintain high governance standards in the global advisory sector. Their brand reputation is highly respected among their audience and they were ready to ramp up their professional look and feel to elevate their presence.

The Advisory Board Centre approached me to help them rebrand their business. They needed plenty of custom-branded templates so that they could manage the revitalised brand themselves.

How to visualise the benefit of connection?

The Advisory Board Centre has two core parts of the brand: advisors + business owners. The advisor; experienced, knowledgeable and ready to make a difference. The business owner; eagerly seeking a boost to their business' growth. An important part of this project involved explaining the value behind connecting these two parts with each other.

If expertise were an object, what would it look like?

Becoming a 'Certified Chair' through the Advisory Board Centre means you have significant experience in senior business roles, an arsenal of skills, frameworks and training to successfully add value to a business. I wanted to show this transformative process and illustrate the expertise and knowledge that advisors hold, ready for use in the real world.

Bringing in illustration

LinkedIn is the main platform that the Advisory Board Centre uses to engage with their audience. In a newsfeed of corporate brands, it was vital to develop an identity that cuts through the mute colours and cheesy stock images – it needed a brand that was uniquely their own. The best way to achieve this was to draw a series of custom created branded illustrations revolving around key topics from the advisory world. Illustrations engage viewers more effectively than text alone. They are more appealing and memorable, making them an excellent tool for conveying complex ideas in a simple and engaging manner.

A visual identity system that pops

To make sure the brand really stood out when promoting webinars & events – a key engagement generator for the Advisory Board Centre – I developed a unique brand pattern using letters from the logo. The three shapes could be moved around creating variety in the pattern.

Brand guidelines that make sense

The difference between a regular rebrand and this one was the need for the Advisory Board Centre to be able to manage the brand themselves. I needed to create brand guidelines that were comprehensive but easy enough for everyone to understand. I also created a series of templates so all their branded materials could be easily amended and deployed themselves.

Rolling it out

With various moving parts to the Advisory Board Centre brand, I needed to carefully and meticulously manage every aspect of the rebrand project. I presented concepts to the team, got them signed off for final approval then began rolling it out across the business. This covered tasks as large as advertising, websites and social media, right down to stationery, white papers and letterheads. I met with the team regularly to collate feedback, amendments and make nothing ever slipped through the cracks.