<\/p>\nConran Design Group developed a new brand positioning for Standard Life, encompassing a new vibrant, digital-first colour palette, a new photography style, a bolder approach to type and new pictograms, illustrations and icons. It also created a new distinctive brand asset: the Journey Line, a hero device that symbolised the ups and downs of everyone\u2019s journey to and through retirement.<\/p>\n
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We caught up with Charlie Skinner, head of brand strategy at Conran Design Group, to find out more about the process of bringing Standard Life to life for 2026.<\/p>\n
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(Image credit: Conran Design Group)How do you make a 200 year-old financial brand feel relevant to younger generations?<\/p>\n
The reality is that 6 out of 7 people in the UK are financially unprepared for retirement, so appealing to younger audiences is as much of a public necessity as it is a business growth move. <\/p>\n
When you\u2019ve got a brand with as much heritage as Standard Life, it\u2019s a careful balance: retaining that equity is as important as pushing your brand forwards. Pension brands are all about trust \u2013 they\u2019re responsible for people\u2019s life savings, after all \u2013 so they can\u2019t afford to seem unstable or fickle, or in extreme cases, become unrecognisable to their customers. <\/p>\n
With Standard Life\u2019s new positioning as \u2018the down-to-earth retirement champion\u2019, we wanted to lean into that accessible, approachable sentiment. There was a resounding feeling at Standard Life that their brand didn\u2019t have a point of view and wasn\u2019t exciting \u2013 which is no way to engage an audience that could quite happily avoid the topic of pensions. Connecting with people that aren\u2019t considering their retirement a top priority anytime soon meant coming across more modern, friendly and relevant. <\/p>\n
Crucially, Standard Life relaunched with a purpose: helping people secure a life of possibilities. This extends the brand beyond the usual hygiene factors of its sector \u2013 reliability, security \u2013 and brings a sense of action and empowerment that appeals to a younger audience. <\/p>\n
The move Standard Life has made is a category move: as retirement champions, they\u2019re representing the category and committing to promoting it in the national consciousness.<\/p>\n
What are the challenges of designing a brand for a subject (retirement) that most people avoid?<\/p>\n
With financial service brands, you\u2019re encountering two obstacles when engaging your audience. There\u2019s ignorance \u2013 because this technical and jargon-filled industry is enshrouded in intimidation \u2013 and there\u2019s avoidance. Financial interactions are stress interactions, in that people engage not because they want to, but because they have to. So most of us have our heads in the sand.<\/p>\n
If you get the tone wrong when designing your brand, the risk is that people will bury their heads deeper into the sand. The role of brand is to bridge the inaccessible world of financial services with our \u2018real\u2019 world. Instead of intimidating or lecturing, it\u2019s about empowering your audience. This promotes a shift from apathy to agency. An industry experiencing this very same shift is healthcare. Consumers are now encouraged to take action: their wellbeing is in their own hands. <\/p>\n
How did you use elements such as colour, tone of voice and imagery to create a more contemporary identity?<\/p>\n
Standard Life has a recognisable colour palette of heritage blue and yellow. It was important to keep these well-loved brand identifiers, but we layered in a secondary, digital-first colour palette. The yellow and blue now have a brighter set and a lighter set to bring more vibrancy and electricity to the brand\u2019s look and feel.<\/p>\n
Pension providers can fall into clich\u00e9s with photography \u2013 think grandparents on the beach \u2013 so we steered away from these familiar tropes and captured energetic life moments that appeal to a millennial age group. <\/p>\n
We also created a new distinctive brand asset, the Journey Line, which appears throughout creative as a dynamic symbol of the road to retirement. It signifies that your retirement journey has already begun \u2013 whether we like it or not.<\/p>\n
How have you approached the challenge of speaking to a broader range of audiences?<\/p>\n
Our first step was creating three new personality traits for the brand, which flipped the script of the financial services category. \u2018Bold\u2019 challenges the passive, safe rhetoric of pension providers. \u2018Optimistic\u2019 pushes positivity, instead of motivating with guilt or fear, which is a very easy button to press. \u2018Empathetic\u2019 brings the human connection \u2013 this is not a cold financial corporation, these are real people who understand the challenges we all face on our road to retirement and are here to help.<\/p>\n
These active personality traits informed a more conversational tone of voice. While the language of financial services is typically focussed on safety, prevention, disaster, it was important for us to bring in the optimism. Younger audiences need to be warmly welcomed \u2013 not scared away \u2013 because they don\u2019t have that same sense of obligation to think about their pensions as older audiences.<\/p>\n
The voice of Standard Life has gone from passive, \u201cWe\u2019re here if you need us\u201d, to active, \u201cGet the future you\u2019ve earned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally \u2013 we\u2019ve adapted our tone of voice to the specific needs of each audience \u2013 from the much more technical B2B audiences, to investors, to financial intermediaries, to end consumers. But without losing the essential character of the brand.<\/p>\n
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