Branding trusted financial advisors: Interview with Thomond Asset Management

Thomond Asset Management is a wealth management company whose aim is to make financial services clear, simple and tailored to their clients. We worked with Thomond AM to develop their brand, and recently launched their new website. The Thomond AM team have put so much energy into their brand, and the final results maintain and build on the company’s excellent reputation. We spoke to one of the founders, Neal Kelly, about the motivations behind the rebrand, and the rewarding outcomes that come from engaging in a brand development process.

With a brand that had already served the company well, Thomond AM came to Piquant because they knew they needed to take it to the next level in order to meet their needs. 

“We were coming up to our 10 year anniversary, and we knew we had to freshen up our brand, and that our website was a little bit dated. We had also been building a client portal, so one of the leading reasons we decided to update the website was because we needed to facilitate that. I wanted to simplify the website, but I also knew we needed to redevelop and reemphasize our brand and our logo. We were always quite proud of our logo, but as with all things it needed to evolve. We just needed something fresher, newer, and across everything – from our corporate box, to our website, to our print materials. 

When we first started Thomond Asset Management, companies like ourselves didn’t put a lot of effort into building a brand. We actually started out during the financial crisis in 2008, and what really stood to us at the time was that we had a brand and it was quite unique at the time. So I wanted to take it a step further, make it bolder, fresher, more up to date. We needed to put together materials and resources we could use across different media, from print to digital, and of course the website. And for that we needed our brand redeveloped.”

Neal and the Thomond AM team had a strong understanding of the importance of a well developed brand when they began this process, and were ready to put the energy and consideration into it from the beginning, and into the future. 

“Branding is very important, I can’t really emphasize that enough. I knew from when we started the business that we were starting in what was quite a saturated market nationwide. I started off researching different companies around the country, our peer group, and nobody at the time had even a decent website. Branding can set you apart.

I’ve always had an appreciation of the importance of marketing and good design – I understand how people react, because when I get materials that don’t look good, it puts me off. It can look unprofessional, and it doesn’t instill a lot of confidence. So although branding is something you need to put a lot of energy into, it’s absolutely worth it in the long run. It was important to get it right, and I think it’s something that is ongoing. It’s not going to stop now that we’ve got a new website finished and a new brochure and new materials to use – it needs to continue and there’s more things to be done.”

The brand development process involves looking inward and closely examining your business; for Neal, this process threw up interesting realisations and rewarding experiences.

“For me the most valuable part of the whole brand development experience was developing our brand story. What we focussed on with Piquant was how to bring out the ‘Thomond’ aspect and how to showcase the Thomond region in our brand. Piquant produced imagery from around the ancient Thomond Kingdom, and it worked really well in telling our story and connections.