Project services
Brand audit
Leadership alignment workshops
Brand definition & articulation
Cultural alignment & EVP articulation
Visual identity evolution
Internal communications & culture ambassadors training
Brand messaging framework
Launch event
Agency partner
Fuel Events, Dublin
IQ-EQ in-house design team
Our brief
IQ-EQ is a global business with over 5,500 people across 25 jurisdictions worldwide. Helping global investors navigate the intricacies of the regulatory landscape, the company acts as a guardian to its clients’ investments, to ensure they grow in a sustainable and compliant manner.
The business is based on building strong relationships and trust with clients. However, the company had experienced rapid growth through acquisition and this had led to fragmentation internally. Many of the offices had an ‘island mentality’, operating in silos and lacking a sense of belonging to wider IQ-EQ family. Our challenge was to define and communicate a clear and inspirational purpose. And it demanded that the purpose be put into action, through people and culture.
What we did
Brand definition
We had worked with the business in 2018 to help in bringing together four very different companies and brands under one umbrella, giving it a new global name and brand identity. ‘IQ-EQ’ reflected the unique skills of both intellectual and emotional intelligence. This was mirrored in the tagline ‘Know how – Know you’. To build long-term value for stakeholders, we needed to apply this same sense of unification to the organisation’s internal culture.
The existing IQ-EQ logo and tagline
First, we completed a full brand audit of the visual and verbal assets to identify inconsistencies and inherited assets from acquired brands, making recommendations that would streamline the new look, feel, and language. Next, we worked with the leadership team through interactive workshops to determine what was most important to the business’ success, and ultimately, define its purpose.
We made the workshops as visual as possible, using verbal and visual inspiration and recording ideas on Post-it notes.
We distilled these sessions into a refined articulation of the brand’s purpose – a true explanation of why the company existed that was rooted in the people behind it: ‘to power people and possibilities’. We expanded it with a purpose narrative statement, providing relevance for each stakeholder.
Culture & EVP
Attracting and retaining the best talent is especially crucial for a business that prides itself on the intellectual and emotional qualities of its people. We needed to inspire, motivate and unite the people of IQ-EQ by channelling the new purpose through the business and building one strong and unified internal culture. To achieve this, we created an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and set of cultural values that people could really believe in.
Working closely with the People & HR team we unpacked the organisations’ operations, rewards, recognition and training schemes. We consolidated this deep dive into a set of three EVP Pillars and proof points: 1. Being you; 2. Advancing you; and 3. Recognising you. Each of the pillars explains what employees would get back from being a part of IQ-EQ.
We accompanied the new EVP articulation with the brand’s internal values – Authentic, Bold, and Collaborative. Whilst we retained the existing brand values, we reworked their explanations to relate to the new purpose and EVP narrative, and to better connect to the people of IQ-EQ.
We packaged the new internal culture piece into a branded articulation: One IQ-EQ. We designed a visual identity to go with it, which could be implemented across digital assets and physical spaces such as offices or at recruitment fairs.
Brand Ambassador training
To ensure the new One IQ-EQ culture was spread throughout the business globally, we worked alongside the People & HR team to select a group of Brand Ambassadors who would become the voice of the brand. Creating a toolkit, we took the group through a series of training sessions and exercises to explain the full journey. We explained the three stages of creating a strong and unified culture: Hearing it (starting from its launch); Believing it (making it the common language); and Living it (through day-to-day behaviours and actions).
Brand messaging framework & launch event
We put together a messaging guide, answering important questions that people might have, to help them understand, use, and live the new purpose and culture, and to act as an ongoing tool to help leadership share the new narrative with their teams.
Then, we worked together with leadership and Fuel Events to compose and steer a captivating and unprecedented launch event for the brand, held in London and broadcast across the globe to all employees in every jurisdiction. A guest host was invited and an interactive panel was made up from members of the leadership team, as well as some brand ambassadors. Real-time follow-up events took place across IQ-EQ offices in the US and Asia Pacific.
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Strategy by Design
