Close Brothers Asset Management (CBAM) is part of the wider Close Brothers Group. While the group primarily serves business audiences CBAM is much more consumer facing, supporting individuals with financial planning and investment services.

We were approached to help them build a more human and empathetic brand, one that can connect emotionally with the business’s audiences.

We started with the brand positioning. For some years CBAM had worked with a brand proposition around ‘clarity’. We gave that idea more context, reframing it as ‘Clarity for life’.

At Close Brothers Asset Management we balance a considered mindset with an optimistic eye to the future to bring clarity to financial planning and investment management. We believe being clear about where you stand today and what tomorrow may hold is the key to making confident choices.

It’s a positioning that looks to the future. We supported the idea with 3 brand values: considered, lucid and optimistic. They’re how the business expresses itself to the outside world, informing writing and behaviour, visual brand language and all communications – the whole brand experience.

Moving on to the visual identity system we started with photography, capturing ‘Clarity for life’ through people and locations. The photos all have a consistent language, they’re warm, rich and calm – delivering on the brand positioning and personality values. The brand colour palette was evolved to work with the photography. Corporate blue was replaced with a deep, rich brown. We then refined the brand’s typography and simplified the logo to create a whole new visual identity system.

As well as playing to the business’s key strengths, specifically around client relationships, we set out to create a brand in tune with wealth today. Considered, elegant and with a positive outlook.