Redefining EY Global Financial Services' Value Proposition

Helping EY Financial Services Define Who They Are and Why They Matter

Challenge: Professional services giant EY leads the way when it comes to Financial Services. But the way they talked about themselves - who they are, what they do and their tone of voice - was not leading. It was a far cry from the warm, engaging and dynamic personality you can see across their comms today.

I'd worked with their Marketing Director Mark Cullen on film campaigns and he felt that the spirit we were able to capture in those scripts was missing elsewhere across the brand. So together, we set out to change that.

Solution: Starting with a series of discovery interviews with EY's senior leaders, I developed the value proposition, tone of voice and language for EY's Financial Services business - defining who they are, what they do and why it matters. This was first used on their Global Website - on the landing and other key pages - then quickly spread to other parts of the business.

A significant part of my approach was to use compelling storytelling to bring the world of financial services to life - you'll see from the web page example above that it springboards from the idea of Einstein's curious mind as he imagined what it might feel like to ride on a beam of light.

As part of this project I also wrote the Financial Services Manifesto - a rousing piece of internal work that set out their stall and had a big impact on EY colleagues, helping to align them with new ways of thinking.

Impact: The impact of the work I did with Mark led to a wholesale change in the way EY talks about itself. Mark is a visionary marketing leader - and I am very proud of the role I played as the lead creative and writer on this prestigious transformation.

One of the key phrases I invented for EY was, "No other industry touches so many lives or shapes so many futures." If you look at their latest comms and advertising, you'll see that they use "Shape the Future with Confidence" as their global tagline.