Architas Investment

Architas, an investment house within the AXA Group, is a multi-manager specialist, proud of how they do things and looking to make a mark. However, their brand was 'corporate' and bland, a challenge when you are a relatively unknown player in an overcrowded market. Our brief was to develop a new positioning and single-minded proposition to help communicate their difference and rise above the crowd.

Internal stakeholder research highlighted a strong ‘underdog’ spirit that wanted to champion doing things differently: putting clients first and simplifying the process. We also needed to balance internal philosophy with audience insights to ensure any proposition felt relevant and useful to their clients, and also could act as a driver for future strategy. Audience research, commissioned with Opinium, revealed a disconnect between investment providers and the real world needs of advisers and investors, and showed us where to aim.

Through this we defined the Architas core purpose and positioning, and created the external proposition ‘As it should be’, which spoke to their strong 'do the right thing' investment philosophy, plus the real world needs of advisers and end investors. It talked of an investment manager prepared to do things differently: making investing easier, talking like real people, not a corporate, and delivering what they say they’re going to do. We wanted to move away from the typical messaging, and visual cliches, of this industry to give Architas a strong tone of voice that could express their point of view.

The work won Highly Commended in the Investment Marketing and Innovation Awards from Investment Week.