What we offer

Research & insight

Our unparalleled network of B2B and B2C relationships – across all facets of the industry – enables us to gather open, honest opinions regarding your business and its offerings from investment consultants, institutions, analysts, DFMs, wealth managers, advisers and various categories of influencer, plus internal senior stakeholder and external end-consumer audiences as required.

By evaluating the output of the resultant research findings in the context of competitors, target audiences and prevailing market trends, we’ll be well-placed to assist you in determining your market status and positioning, where it could successfully be in the future and how equipped it is to undertake any required transition.

Strategy

Asset managers face major challenges, from accelerating competition, to fee compression, to heightened customer expectations – business and consumer – to the relentless advance of passive.

We have a deep understanding of the evolving market, the commercial and regulatory pressures you face, together with the front-of-mind priorities of your various target audiences. We can therefore work with you to identify your key strategic imperatives, examining the extent and the nature of marketing and communications activity required to fulfil them – from an ad hoc product campaign to a ‘root and branch’ brand repositioning, always aligning our recommendations to the people and budgetary resources available.

Brand & product positioning

In an overpopulated and increasingly competitive market environment, any asset manager needs a clear and compelling reason to exist … together with a brand that communicates that raison d’être in a way that’s relevant, motivating and differentiating. We can help you develop a distinctive brand positioning – and associated, supporting messaging – that does exactly that. It’ll be authentic in terms of your capabilities, reflective of your culture and aligned with your values. In addition, we can supply comprehensive brand guidelines and offer full guidance on how any brand repositioning can be executed across your business – and across all channels – efficiently, consistently and credibly.

Similarly, our exposure to a wide-ranging array of client offerings means we are well-versed in unearthing, and then articulating, the nuanced features, characteristics and benefits that are likely to secure for your products a genuinely differentiated and truly compelling positioning in what is a very crowded – and often seemingly homogenous – investment landscape.

Digital marketing

The range and increasing complexity of digital marketing activity – paid search, paid social, SEO (onpage and offpage), display, influencer outreach etc – is such that ensuring a commercially viable ROI becomes ever harder. Moreover, in our experience, most brands track ‘soft’ metrics which are unlikely to correlate with genuine business uplifts rather than ‘hard’ metrics which are more reliable indicators of performance success.

We partner with specialist digital agency, Chillibyte, to offer services encompassing the full spectrum of online marketing activity: website design and build, content optimisation, onpage and offpage search engine optimisation (SEO), PPC advertising, and social media management and monitoring. In addition, our well-established digital landscape audit, utilising a range of the latest evaluation tools, can assess how well digital activity is performing in terms of key business metrics – with results assessed relative to your competitor set – and how best to implement the channel-wide enhancements necessary to ensure ongoing, significant ROI.

Content strategy

Blogs, vlogs, podcasts, webinars, whitepapers, infographics, e-books, case studies, newsletters … in an increasingly saturated content marketing landscape, asset managers are devoting ever-increasing budgets to content marketing activity and yet finding it harder to achieve cut-through and drive engagement.

Our experience in building potent, cost-effective content strategies is based on an understanding of the key content marketing mistakes being made by most asset managers and, more importantly, how a few isolated examples are getting it right and achieving real traction. We can do the same for you, whilst also helping you with related aspects such as content creation, production, CRM-based delivery and content optimisation (SEO).

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is profoundly changing knowledge and data-centric industries, evolving at a rapid pace and creating unprecedented opportunities for early movers. fVenn, in partnership with ExoBrain, offers AI consulting and implementation services uniquely tailored to the needs of asset managers.

We work closely with you to develop a customised AI strategy, helping to harness its transformative power to augment your workforce, automate processes, and explore the potential of autonomous agents. Our flexible, modular, experiment-based approach ensures that you maximise learning and value realisation whilst minimising costs. We also remain committed to providing ongoing support and guidance to help you scale your AI initiatives and remain future-compatible.

Advertising creative & design direction

The principals at fVenn have been responsible for some of the most well-recognised – and, more importantly, effective – advertising campaigns in asset management, on behalf of many of the sector’s largest brands. Much of this work – across paid, earned and owned media, both traditional and online – has been award-winning.

Our preferred alliance for creative services is Core Marketing Partners, with whom we have worked on a number of well-recognised and highly effective advertising and design assignments for some of the industry’s leading brands. Core works as an extension of our team, marrying exceptional creativity – online and offline – with our strategic direction.

ESG consulting

The accelerating focus on ESG integration, metrics and reporting presents both significant challenges and opportunities for all asset managers. At fVenn, we’re in a position to support investment firms with a wide range of consulting and communications services. Our exclusive commitment to the investment management industry, coupled with our practical ESG project experience, means we are well-placed to guide organisations on their sustainability journey. To that end, we partner with specialist ESG consultants HiPath who have unparalleled experience in the world of sustainability communications.