TURNING ‘A’ BROKER INTO ‘YOUR’ BROKER

BUSINESS SERVICES

BRAND MODELLING • LOGO & VISUAL IDENTITY • WEBSITE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT • COPYWRITING • PRINT COLLATERAL

THE APPROACH

We started with the positioning, working through CIIB’s offer and the way the team actually does business. The service pillars were all there: tailored solutions, expertise built on experience, in-person service and a genuine high street presence. They just weren’t organised in a way that set CIIB apart.

So we gave them a structure. Three stand-out factors lead the story: Accessible Team, Bespoke Approach and Classic Service. Experience, expertise and the systems behind the scenes sit underneath as support. A simple A, B, C that the team could remember, and that every piece of communication could be checked against.

The early thinking leaned heavily on nostalgia: the era of your GP, your bank manager, your advisor. There was real truth in it, but nostalgia on its own looks backwards, and a brand built on looking back can feel dated by design. We reframed it. CIIB isn’t recreating the past. It’s continuing a standard of service that others have quietly dropped. The positioning became classic service values, actively delivered in the modern world.

THE IDEAS

The shift that unlocked the brand was a small one: from ‘a’ broker to ‘your’ broker.

Clients don’t want a provider. They want their person, someone who knows their history, picks up when they call and works from a real address they can walk into. The brand needed to move beyond describing good service and start to embody ownership, familiarity and trust. The feeling we were aiming for was simple: I know who I’m dealing with, and I know where they are.

That thinking led to a concept built around a fixed point. Location isn’t a detail for CIIB, it’s proof of accountability. And when everything in a relationship points towards the client, the client sits at the centre.

THE WORK

The icon brings both ideas together. Four directional markers point inward to a single midpoint. That point is you, the client, with the CIIB team gathered around as a structure of support. It’s also 52 Earls Court Road, the place that has anchored the business for more than 50 years. A clean, tracked-out wordmark sits alongside it, giving the identity the clarity and composure that high net worth and commercial clients expect. Through refinement, we adjusted the colouring and worked through the lockup and the positioning of the icon and type until the two sat in balance.

The markers also work as a system. They can be used singly, repeated as pattern, or arranged to frame, contain and point towards key messages. The palette keeps a clear nod to the original CIIB blue, linking the brand’s past with its future, and pairs it with a bright accent that pulls the eye exactly where it’s needed.

The language works the same way. “Insurance, Personally.”, “Personal. Recognisable. Yours.” and “Accessible Team. Bespoke Approach. Classic Service.” run through the brand and can be swapped depending on where they appear and what they need to do.

The website is where the strategy works hardest. We restructured the old site so services and divisions are clear and easy to navigate, then wrote, designed and built it in line with the new identity. People are at the forefront, supported by a consistent suite of imagery that complements the new team photography. There is deliberately no contact form. Every route leads to a phone number, an email address or the office itself, because the personal approach should start with the very first conversation. Behind the scenes, the site is set up to strengthen SEO and AEO, so CIIB is easier to find in the way people search today and in the way they’ll search tomorrow.

We completed the rollout with business cards and a review of the corporate collateral suite, so the brand carries the same character from the first search to the first handshake.

The result is a brand that finally looks like the business behind it: modern without being cold, rooted without being old-fashioned, and personal in every detail. CIIB stayed on the high street while others went online. Now the brand makes that choice look like what it is: an advantage.

“Our company branding has been constant since 1973. We knew we needed a refresh and had a vision of what we wanted to portray – but had no idea how to do it, and so approached Pip. What initially attracted us to Pip is their shared professional values of a personal service and a people first approach.

Following our brief, it was clear that they had a clear understanding of what we wanted. They worked hard to genuinely understand our business and translated our ideas into reality. The result is a new modern look without compromising on our company’s culture of classic broking; which we are extremely happy with.

In the age of AI, it was tempting not to put investment into our image, to skip the creative process and lean on a computer-generated option. Having seen the passion, the skill and the output from the team at Pip, the choice is clear – choose creative.”