Creating the visual representation of a value proposition
Carpenter Group created an award-winning communication system and a compelling look to help ADP Retirement Services compete.
Situation
How can we reposition our retirement product line to compete against established upscale brands and build market share?
ADP’s suite of retirement plan offerings had been carefully built through a series of acquisitions. Well known for its payroll and employee data services, it was relatively unknown in the retirement plan space and was working to develop a simplified offering — ADP ACCESS — which positioned ADP around its differentiators. While spanning the spectrum of plan types, the firm was poised to target small and midsize plans, and was seeking to build its market share there.
ADP needed a way to create impact with its brand through design that communicated its value and made its retirement services business stand out — both from the employee data services offered by the parent company, and from the many established retirement market competitors. Additionally, it needed to execute a rationalized system of materials that clearly communicated the access and ease it provides to small and midsize plan sponsors.
Solution
Building a brand identity that leverages information graphics.
With deep knowledge of the retirement plan market, Carpenter Group realized that three advantages differentiated ADP: its extensive employee education program; an objective, open-architecture suite of investments; and the ability to leverage technology and relationships as the nation’s leading provider of employee and payroll data services.
Carpenter Group created an engaging brand identity that promoted these differentiators, and focused on an iconic, visual representation of the “building blocks” that drive retirement plan results: education, enrollment and optimization. This icon represented these elements as stepped building blocks, and was used as a design element throughout all materials. In addition, Carpenter Group created a library of images showing paths, roads, stairways and other metaphors of getting access. Carpenter Group also created guidelines for a simplified literature system, limiting materials to core elements that would help promote ADP ACCESS to advisors, plan sponsors and plan participants.
With its new brand, ADP was able to confidently launch into the retirement plan space.
In addition, the collateral materials created won silver in the business-to-business campaign category at the prestigious 2010 Financial Communications Society (FCS) Portfolio Awards.
