Repositioning AFS, a leading traditional broker located in the old stock exchange building in the heart of Amsterdam.

My role
Creative Director
Designer

Situation

With a history of 170 years, AFS is a familiar face in the world of financial services. AFS intermediates (is a broker) for corporate clients, bringing capital and opportunity together. AFS has a strong reputation and for years its values have stood firm: collaborative, entrepreneurial, ambitious, ethical and accurate.

AFS believes in the power of teamwork, win-win collaboration and shared success. That is the company’s culture and how it treats its customers. In short AFS is not a place for fast boys from the City and individual bonuses. Successes are shared. It is a solid and reliable party, maybe even a little boring.

Meanwhile, the world is changing rapidly for AFS. For example, the global energy transition is leading to new products and opportunities, such as the huge emissions allowance market. That’s (rapidly) attracting new parties, who want to capture a share of those new markets with large communications budgets. In that violence, AFS is too invisible, too modest.

Insight

AFS’s values are not old-fashioned, but instead very contemporary. Major challenges, such as climate change, require cooperation, sharing knowledge, capital and power. Thereby, the network AFS has built up over many years and the trust it enjoys is of enormous value. Sustainability is in its nature. And at a time when ESG and transparency are hot items, this gives AFS a significant advantage. Credibility is not the problem. The organization just needs to start thinking and acting much more confidently.

Result

Together we developed a new positioning. Based on that, we initially wrote a new brand story and developed a new visual identity and communication style.

In several working sessions, we took employees through the new story. The main message in these sessions was: your brand identity has not essentially changed, it has only become much more current. This insight worked as a catalyst. Suddenly it was “cool” to work for AFS and all kinds of ideas were released. That was totally the intention, to release a self propelling energy.

AFS – Connected for sustainable success

Visual Identity

Everything has been addressed.

The logo has been modernized and made much more agile. It associates with (money) flows and “connecting the dots”.

A modern, no-nonsense font was chosen. After all, AFS wants to communicate crisply.

The main color blue has been retained, but has become much fresher and more powerful, and a whole color palette has been added. This is certainly important for infographics. The colors are not garish, rather modest, but distinctive and recognizable.

The illustration and photography style has been adjusted, portraits have become a lot more lively and quirky, and finally, when the communication is more about renewable energy, we try to use as many nature images as possible that also deal with flows. The energy market is currently the most challenging market and everything is geared towards AFS being able to stand out strongly in it.

In that respect, there is a world to win.