Custom corporate brand creative and marketing
A central focus of our business has been developing key relationships with individuals or companies with multiple clients needing exceptional creative. These may be ‘CMOs for hire,’ larger agencies who need additional support, or other companies whose strength lies elsewhere than design solutions. A prime example is Coin Branding, a Toronto-based firm led by Andris Pone, specializing in financial advisor corporate brand marketing.
A creative partnership emerges
Our relationship began in 2020, and it’s been a dream to work with such a visionary in Coin, collaborating on building custom brand creative for some of Canada’s top advisors, brokers, and insurance experts such as Surround Wealth Advisors, Outfitter Financial, Dream Harbour Wealth Advisors, Brian Laundry, and Trevor Parry.
Initiate supports Coin as part of a tiger team that integrates a package of marketing-focused deliverables to position Coin clients among the highest level of financial specialists in the marketplace. We are in great company with exceptionally talented writers, photographers and videographers. Usually, the process begins with Andris working through brand foundation, naming and tagline exploration with the client. This is a critical step as it sets the tone, purpose and mission based on our design work. Along with additional information in the form of a questionnaire from Initiate, the results of this phase fuel the work that our team embarks on.
Carefully crafted identities
Every visual branding project is treated with its sense of uniqueness. While our process to develop logos follows a similar approach each time, the result must speak to the individual client to help set them apart from their competition. It’s also important to us to ensure that Coin’s clients, many of whom are colleagues in the industry, don’t feel that any of the work is formulaic in any way, shape or form.
Setting the rules in place
The primary reason why we develop brand guidelines for each client is to ensure that the carefully-crafted elements of each visual brand are applied consistently when working with any other outside suppliers, designers, or marketers. Outlining their font, colour and logo application guidelines is essential to educating the client on the value of uniform and consistent visual treatment in future marketing efforts.
Unifying the digital experience
Paramount to the process is amalgamating the efforts of the photographer, videographer and Coin’s content and brand foundation in designing and developing visually stunning websites for each of Andris’ clients. All of the efforts in creating a professional visual brand results in our team having the tools and options available to customize each experience for each client. Usually built in a WordPress environment, our sites allow for flexibility, growth and management of content seamlessly, yet always pay attention to the custom design and style established for each brand.
Clients like Coin Branding have allowed us to reach additional clientele we may not have been previously exposed to. Coin has also allowed us the opportunity to flex our creative muscles to ensure that, while we work with multiple clients within a given sector, our designs are purposeful enough to stand up against each other—uniquely.