Challenge

Institutional Investor has been an enduring and reputable voice in international finance for nearly 60 years. Beginning as an industry magazine, it organically diversified over the decades, building exclusive events and research components that complement its trusted editorial arm.  

But over time, this breadth diluted Institutional Investor’s distinguished brand with many distracting sub-brands, inconsistent brand executions, and a confusing product portfolio customers couldn’t easily untangle. This was made more complex by the Covid-19 pandemic, which required Institutional Investor to rapidly pivot its events business to the digital sphere, and raised questions about the kind of experience and service they wanted to create for customers. 

Institutional Investor as a brand needed clarity and focus, not only to improve and unify the customer experience in the short term, but to capitalize on new opportunities and the next generation of customers and colleagues.  

Solutions

Institutional Investor partnered with Prophet to revitalize the brand, leveraging its strong legacy while respectfully updating it to prepare the publisher for its next stage of evolution.  

Crucial to this was modernizing the product portfolio to create a cohesive customer experience. The result was an architecture with three new pillars designed around real customer needs and outcomes rather than rigid barriers that isolated individual services or customer segments, all underpinned by a strong single master brand to drive the portfolio development.  

Working with the leadership team across the business, we then redefined the brand positioning to build a brand anchored in its respected heritage and prestigious global network, but one that also moves them forward into the next phase of growth: creating a community that shapes markets and the world.  

This speaks to Institutional Investor’s belief in the great power its community has to create positive impact when knowledge is shared and connections are made. This, in turn, creates value in people’s lives and helps make the world a more prosperous and secure place. 

To support the execution of this new positioning, we developed a brand-new visual identity — from logotype and monogram, through to color, typeface, imagery and illustration — all grounded in the principles of intelligence, intrigue and impact.