Graphic design and branding evolution project for investor relations consultancy

Hi there, Capital Access Group - an IR consultancy is looking for a brand refresh before it's website relaunch. See a full brief below. Please could you provide me with a quote? Thanks, Sophie ++ Who we are Capital Access Group – a long-established, but growing investor relations consultancy – is migrating its website from Wix to WordPress and doing a complete site refresh. To make the most of this, the team would like some new visual assets and collateral to elevate its brand presence and differentiate itself within the market. Some of these would ideally also be used on LinkedIn, our main social media channel. We would then look to work with an external partner to get the site "client-ready". What we do We help our clients (listed corporates) access, engage, and manage their investor relations engagement with this audience and we do this through two main pillars: 1. Investor access: we analyse our clients’ share registers and identify new targets, and then introduce our clients to new investors in essence, setting up roadshows (taking clients to meet investors, in e.g. Birmingham). Our team essentially pitches the stock to investors – it’s a relationship-based role with an element of equity sales. We aim to make our clients lives easier so they can show up to the meetings we have arranged. We are also proactive – this is important to know, as it differentiates us from our competitors, particularly the brokers. We specialise in targeting, providing access to, and engaging with the mid-tier segment of the investor universe in the UK & Europe. This mid-tier segment sits between the larger institutional investors (e.g. BlackRock, Fidelity, etc) that the investment banks talk to, and the retail investor (e.g. anyone managing their own investments via apps, etc). The investor universe CAG specialises in is institutional/professional - so listed companies are dealing with actual professional investment and fund managers who know what they are talking about. It’s challenges are that it is very diverse both geographically and organisationally (7000+ investment managers at 1000+ offices across the UK & Europe) but its benefits include natural over-time purchasing of shares from an audience that can buy smaller listed companies/stocks due to less liquidity constraints, whilst also making a sizeable difference in aggregate. For example, the group of mid-tier investors has £1.6trn assets under management (AUM). 2. Sponsored research: we write equity research coverage (notes) for our clients which are accessible here and freely accessible to all investors, including the public. Some context for this is that investment bank and broker research is typically behind a paywall that only institutional investors that pay for that investment bank’s research can access. This results in significantly reduced awareness from investors about listed companies, particularly those that are smaller and have only 1-3 research analysts covering them. In turn, this worsens price discovery with listed companies then trading on lower valuations than they could otherwise do so. https://www.capitalaccessgroup.co.uk/research-portal. We weave general IR advisory, such as messaging advice to this investor audience, and investor targeting into both these services. Our client base is the investor relations teams at large FTSE 100 listed businesses down to CEOs and CFOs of smaller listed AIM firms (UK and now Europe). Our competitors are: RMS Partners, Kepler, QuotedData, Equity Development and Edison Group. However, we particularly like Rose & Co’s website and without copying it, would like something similar in our own brand identity. We have a full colour palette, company font, and a set of brand logos which I can share. Current website: https://www.capitalaccessgroup.co.uk/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/capital-access Intended style: professional, slick, and not cookie cutter/generic. We want to position ourselves as trusted advisers. Scope of project/deliverables: Phase 1: -Custom set of icons: CAG bullet point, icons which represent: Investor Access, Sponsored Research, IR advisory, and Investor Targeting. Please feel to suggest others. A couple of options would be nice. - Custom shapes, graphics, frames, (e.g. RMS Partners’ bracket https://www.rmspartners.com/) and elements to weave into page design and social media using current brand identity, for LinkedIn, website and pitch deck. -A custom image (graphic, custom photo) for: our Investor Access page, Sponsored Research page, and our News page – our CEO likes the idea of a moving arrow, perhaps an iStock photo of the U.K. Regions could be used as a base here. -LinkedIn banner -Colour palette: any recommendations? We asked Claude to generate additional colours beyond the three core ones which we can share. - X3 options for a background pattern for slides, site, etc.: for example the red and navy connector pattern on the https://equitory.com/ website. -Visual brand guidelines: an extended version of the colour palette, logos, font shared – how do we use these etc. in a single document Q&A Is this intended as a light brand evolution or a more substantial visual refresh? I would say something in middle perhaps. But we're open to views based on what we've shared what do you think we need? The aim is to build out what we have, and right now it seems like we need more rather than less. Are there any aspects of the current visual identity or website that you feel are no longer working or do not reflect the business today? Versus our peers, our website is extremely basic, it looks like a quick build and several elements look rushed and PowerPoint-esque. We would like to be aspirational in how our branding evolves and shoot for the stars. As such, we are expanding the number of pages we have and making the whole site more commercial. We feel that our current branding and original site doesn't reflect the calibre of clients we have (FTSE 100s etc), our expertise, the history of our firm and distinctive position in the market, nor the results we deliver and as a consequence our consistently high client retention rate. What I would say though is that the regional/city scape imagery - due to the nature of our work - we do identify with. The pie charts being quite monotone, for example, we don't like. As before, we are very much open to suggestions on how our visual identity could evolve, including a recommendation as to whether a new font could work better for us. How far can we push the visual direction: more institutional/conservative or more premium/editorial and modern within the IR space? A combination of the both, but it's worth remembering that some of our competitors do sit within the investment banking landscape and our target audience is CEO/CFOS and IRs, so we wouldn't want a complete divorce from the institutional. Saying that, we do want to stand out to an extent in the marketplace. Apologies if this isn't useful!