“It’s just business, it’s nothing personal”. You hear it all the time, but nothing is further from the truth. The best businesses are personal. Just ask Richard Branson or Dianne Foreman. So the last thing you want to do in transforming the identity of one of New Zealand’s best businesses, Craigs Investment Partners, is to make it impersonal. To get all over analytical and ideation on it…white boards, workshops, brand manifestos, brand triangles or bananas…and play games of ‘if it were a car’, ‘an animal’, ‘a colour’. No, you need to get up close and personal. Culture trumps strategy, and product trumps promotion. So you need to get out of the office and the brainstorm room, roll your sleeves up and become a client. Experience first hand what the business is, not what the brochures might say it is. Invest your own money, we did. And guess what? When you get up close and personal with Craigs, it’s surprisingly human. Yes they do the big deals at the top end of town, but then they have long understood that investing is a people, not a numbers game. We saw that this was the heart of the company. So we gave Craigs a quiet revolution that transforms the way they go to market with everything from investment statements to communications, and that’s not just good for business, it’s hugely personally rewarding.
