Counsel. Corporate Services

Preparing a 30-year old financial services brand for the decades ahead

Background

Counsel is one of the oldest financial services providers on Anguilla. As a licensed fiduciary, they help hundreds of clients from all over the world with company incorporation, company management and captive insurance. They have built

Using a process-based approach, we completely retooled Counsel’s brand image over the course of 6 months.

What we did

Art Direction
Brand Design
Brand Strategy
Copywriting
Creative Direction
Photography
UI/UX Design
Web Development

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The Challenge

Counsel initially approached us wanting to redraw their older logo. The firm's managing director felt that the company had outgrown their branding. With a downturn in business due to the pandemic, she felt that the timing was right to revisit and refresh their brand to reflect what Counsel had become.

After a lengthy consultation, we realized that their website was also not meeting business objectives, and might be turning away potential clients. There were a number of non-functional links and critical information about the company’s services was missing.  Finally, overuse of stock images throughout also did not reflect the image they wanted to present. Bad stock photos do not build trust or establish any credibility, which is fatal in their line of work.

Our Approach

We kicked off the project with a brand strategy workshop held over a couple of days. We looked into why they were able to connect so well with their clients and maintain such a phenomenal retention rate (over 95%).

What we found was that their clients appreciated their knowledge and friendliness. As long-time Counsel clients ourselves, this wasn't at all surprising. With an all-local staff serving hundreds of companies all over the world, Counsel is uncompromising on the high levels of service they provide, without the corporate stuffiness you might expect. This friendly, knowledgeable culture is central to their company culture.

We created user personas of their key client demographics, and what was important to them, and developed a key brand selling point: "International levels of service with a friendly local face".

We developed a number of design directions ranging from “mild” to “spicy”. Mild being ones that were more traditional and least likely to offend. Spicy, being ones that were more bold, and a departure from the existing brand.

To our delight, Counsel went with the bold option. In Managing Director Fiona Curtis’ own words, “A company that redesigns their logo like this plans to be around for a long time!”

Work on the website started with a comprehensive user experience workshop using the personas we developed earlier as a guide to navigating the site.

Through our numerous conversations, we realized that Counsel didn't sell services. Their process involved diagnosing problems, then combining their expertise and various service offerings into comprehensive solutions. We reengineered the copy from the original website, reorganizing based on their client types and to reflect their approach to helping their clients.

The main focus was highlighting the personality of the firm. The home page features a full screen hero image of the managing director smiling while interacting with a client (fun fact: our photo model has been a Counsel client for a decade. Who said there's no truth in advertising?)

Next were photo-shoots over a number of days to capture not only the usual corporate head-shots, but also team members in their natural environment. We shot a number of candid, environmental portraits of the Counsel team around the office, filled with smiles and natural interaction between team members.

The Result

In the first week after going live with the website, and even before a formal brand launch, Counsel were able to close on a lead they had been nurturing for almost a year.

Their client happened to look at the website (completely unprompted), and was convinced after being able to see the faces and personalities. They called and committed on the spot. Their comment was that this felt like a real company, with real people.

That single client repaid Counsel’s investment in the rebrand and then some!

Cabarita understood that we live and work in truly international times and that Counsel’s online presence is the ‘shop front’ for our clients, many of whom will never visit our office in person. Their very thorough process included interviewing myself and other team members and examining the way we do business before presenting design concepts.

The designs were exactly what we wanted and we are delighted with the results. Counsel Limited now has a comprehensive brand presence that truly reflects who we are and what we do. The feedback from our current and prospective clients has been excellent!

Fiona Curtis
Managing Director

Ready to make something better?

We should talk...
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