Meet the client.
Heidrick & Struggles are a leading global executive search and management consultancy with a history stretching back over 65 years.
They work with over 70% of the Fortune 1000 companies across the globe, helping them shape culture, place Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) at the heart of their strategy, and build future-ready leaders, teams and organisations.
They make successful businesses even more successful. And they’re the best at what they do.
Our challenge.
We’ve worked with Heidrick & Struggles for over three years, so they know us as a knowledgeable, creative content design partner who can integrate well with their various teams (across three time zones) and work autonomously to deliver exactly what they need in a way that embodies their brand and values.
This time, they tasked us with creating visuals for the wide-ranging set of materials that make up their annual research project. The materials would present findings and actionable insights for C-suite leaders in DE&I.
Creating high-quality visuals for a variety of formats and channels is what we do. The big challenge with this project was to develop a visual identity for the campaign that aligned with the overall editorial brand and, at the same time, stood out and handled DE&I sensitively and creatively.
Our approach.
Our first stop was taking the time to read and digest the research, linking up with key stakeholders to delve into and understand every aspect of the project. This really helped us get a better idea of where we could go with things visually.
We explored different ways we could push the creative while staying within the brand guidelines. DE&I is such a rich topic, giving us so much to work with in terms of look and feel. We used illustration to bring a diverse range of people to life, pairing them with a mixture of graphic shapes, textures and colours to celebrate people’s differences and the positive effects of combining those differences, representing equality.
After presenting our initial ideas to the H&S team, we rolled the agreed visual identity out across the suite of assets, having regular check-ins with stakeholders to make sure the project stayed on track throughout.
Our work.
The finished product was a suite of assets for a thought leadership campaign, brought together by an eye-catching but cohesive visual identity that was unique to the campaign while staying within the brand guidelines.
We produced:
- Research report
- Playbook
- Infographics
- Full animation
- Social content
- Presentation
The impact.
Once we were finished, the Heidrick & Struggles team had a wide selection of visually engaging materials ready to be used by people across their organisation to raise awareness about their expertise in DE&I, both internally and externally. H&S are known for creating insightful, impactful content that organisations the world over hold as the gold standard.
This research has sparked conversations with current clients, engaged new prospects, and given fresh insight into DE&I as a whole. And of course, all this only strengthens the brand’s shining reputation as true thought leaders in their industry.