For more than 50 years, American Century Investments has been bringing Wall Street to Main Street. And our work with them includes positioning, identity refreshment, product branding, sponsorship strategy, co-branding and even international research.

Situation

American Century has grown from a small mutual fund manager in 1958 to a multi-disciplined, global asset management firm offering diverse investment vehicles and employing over 3,000 people. Throughout this evolution, the organization never developed a corporate brand strategy to define its business channels and diverse investment offerings. Each channel was managed independently, resulting in inconsistent visual identities and conflicting product and company information.

Solution

To unite American Century’s individual and institutional investment businesses, CoreBrand defined a compelling brand platform built on the organization’s unwavering belief in genuine, optimistic, American values. Recognizing that their audiences look for solutions tailored to their different needs and objectives. however, we developed differentiated communications systems for each business channel built upon a shared visual identity. The brand activities inspired a company-wide effort to integrate business processes, product and company information. Whether customers came across American Century in print or television advertising, on the Web, in marketing communications or investor documents, they found “One brand, one voice.”

During our involvement with American Century, we also helped the organization evolve the brand name to American Century Investments, refined and optimized the corporate signature and developed a brand for the LIVESTRONG Portfolios, a specialized investment product created in partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation.