Challenger bank and strategy 2024 brand of the year EQ Bank, has a new look, designed to update the customer experience and move on from stock imagery and contrasting colours.
As Andy MacPherson, EQ Bank’s VP of marketing explains, the prior look didn’t enrich the firm’s digital-banking experience – a core part of EQ’s business plan and value – to its fullest and didn’t match the tone it wanted in its marketing. Those reasons coupled with the fact that EQ Bank’s brand identity hadn’t been substantially refreshed in several years, made it time for a change.
“Our previous look leaned into bold contrasts and more playful stock photography, which made sense for where our business was at the time,” MacPherson says. “As we’ve evolved, we needed a more mature, cohesive visual tone that better reflects the message of how we offer customers a way to make it in a world of take. For that, we expanded the toolset with a focus on warmth, kindness and humanity that’s come alive in this refresh.”
According to MacPherson, EQ Bank knew it had equity in its name, logo, use of a warm welcoming yellow and the “Make Bank” slogan. There was also a sense of confidence that EQ’s brand symbol, ‘The Jewel’, was well known from its advertising.
“So, we intentionally preserved what people connected with and created a framework to support and elevate it while encouraging our new elements to link back to our brand strategy pillars of being brave, direct and kind.”
According to the bank’s creative director, Dylan Gerard, EQ Bank needed an expanded colour palette for its digital properties to enhance users’ experience and to ensure it had a diverse toolset to meet accessibility standards in such a way as to highlight the brand elements that users most associate with EQ Bank. “Broadening our colour palette helped us achieve these accessibility standards while breathing fresh life into our visual identity,” he says.
EQ Bank is rolling out new visuals across its family of brands during a year in which a wider launch of the EQ Bank Business Account for small business owners and entrepreneurs is planned. In the interim, EQ Bank’s digital ads and mid-funnel ads will launch soon.
“This new visual identity will inform our creative going forward, with our partners already adapting our new look and feel,” Gerard says. “It’s important to note that the new visual identity was always intended from a creative strategy POV to be about ‘tools not rules.'”
The brand work was completed entirely in-house with EQ’s internal agency creatives across copy, design and motion. It then added Canadian illustrator Jori Bolton to the project to craft its illustrations, which were a big part of the new brand visual language.
