The challenge

With a history dating back to 1885, Perpetual is one of Australia’s largest wealth managers - a trusted and respected expert adviser to high net worth individuals, families and businesses, and a leading provider of corporate trustee services.

In 2013, Perpetual was undergoing significant, transformational change and its brand strategy needed to be revisited and realigned to reflect and enable the change. Amidst this change, Perpetual acquired The Trust Company, a move which consolidated the need for a comprehensive brand review.

Perpetual needed a brand narrative that was consistent and compelling for both internal and external audiences. They also wanted to modernise and make the brand more relevant - positioning it for maximum impact with clients and employees and deploying it for maximum future business growth. The challenge was to ensure that the brand positioning took into account Perpetual’s different business divisions and audiences.

The process

BrandMatters mapped out a highly consultative bespoke process to ensure all parts of the business and Perpetual’s senior leadership team contributed to and bought into the brand development process every step of the way.

We started with comprehensive desk research. A series of workshops with each business area followed, resulting in customer value propositions for Perpetual’s three client-facing divisions. The propositions were tested internally and then fine-tuned.

Finalising the propositions led to the ground-up development of the overarching Perpetual brand positioning and brand archetype. To ensure it resonated, we tested the brand positioning with Perpetual clients and prospects through a series of individual and paired in-depth interviews.

Using the insights gleaned from the qualitative research, we enhanced and fine-tuned the brand positioning, documented the brand personality, values and tone of voice and created a brand mnemonic encompassing the brand attributes.

The outcome

At the conclusion of the project, the Perpetual marketing team had a clear brand strategy to present to internal audiences and take to market. The brand strategy was embraced by Perpetual employees, who felt much more confident in representing the brand.

Following the project, Perpetual asked BrandMatters to help articulate and bring the new brand positioning to life for their advertising agency in order to ensure its safe carriage through to a new creative concept and campaign. The campaign, Trust is Perpetual, continues to be used.