The true north of business’ backcountry
A regional leader in middle-market mergers and acquisitions for the past 30 years, Compass Advisors sought a rebrand to rejuvenate the company's identity, while specifically targeting its message to its desired audience: outdoor-related companies. Massive proposed a strategic overhaul to the brand's identity, enlivening all touchpoints with nature-infused graphics and imagery, a new logo and color scheme marrying dynamic reds and blues with corporate gray, and professional copy to create cohesive messaging. We reimagined the language and symbolism around the closing of a transaction, replacing the traditional industry tombstone (big, dead paperweight) with a benchmark (pocket-sized, beautiful wood medallion) that visually and philosophically aligned with the company's new branding. Finally, we drafted and compiled a media kit, affectionately coined “The Trail Guide,” as a comprehensive marketing package for prospective new clients.
Compass Advisors
Identity / Media Kit / Office Communication / Website
Originally founded by the current managing director's father in 1991, Compass Advisors' ethos and intentions had evolved since its inception in tandem with local and national economic growth. As Bozeman put itself on more than just Montana's map, the rural farming community became a regional epicenter of business, drawing companies from all over the globe and launching some local enterprises to stratospheric success. Compass Advisors sought to harness and capitalize on that energy, while supporting family businesses and solopreneurs successfully navigate into and out of mergers and acquisitions transactions with financial savvy.
We proposed and developed a brand identity that creatively situated Compass Advisors as both a local neighborhood resource and a national financial force. The proposed color scheme and logo match the company's ethos: simple, decisively clean, and dynamically engaging. The website highlights both where the company has been — through in-depth portfolio samples, case studies, and testimonials — and where it's going. Images of nature's sweeping majesty — vast mountainscapes, towering conifers, dwarfing rock formations — define each landing page of the website and provide background throughout the suite of marketing materials.
Each element of the identity is purposeful, matching both the integrity of the company and the ethos of its corporate team.
Massive's opus of the Compass Advisors rebrand, the Trail Guide is a thing of beauty. A comprehensive leave-behind for prospective new clients, the 20-page, lay-flat, spiral-bound book is printed on thick cardstock and includes a pocket for additional targeted marketing materials. Both a guide and a manifesto, the Trail Guide flawlessly captures the entirety of the company's identity.
While the website rebrand defines Compass Advisors clearly as a boutique investment banking and brokerage firm, it situates them firmly in the outdoor industry market. It concisely dictates their audience — mid-size growing and emerging companies — while highlighting their successes. It diverges from the ultra conservative buttoned-up ethos of its previous iteration, embracing the adventure and risk inherent in life and entrepreneurship on the edge of wilderness both literal and figurative. These pivotal shifts in the brand’s visual language acutely redefine the company as a kinetic force, one so securely ensconced in the volatility of growth that it is a compass to those lost in the sway of change.
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