Case study | Brand voice and content strategy
I started working with Insurance Advisory Service (IAS), a North Sydney financial advisory and insurance firm, in 2014, writing blogs and website copy. Today I’m its content strategist: I shape the brand voice, created the framework its advice is built around, and run the whole content program.
The brief
IAS was founded in 1973 by Jo Brassett’s father. Jo worked alongside him for many years before taking over, and the family business became a woman-led advisory and insurance firm. Its voice needed to make the same journey: from a family legacy business to a modern firm with Jo at the front of it.
The content also had a harder job than most. IAS’s clients are making some of the biggest decisions of their lives, about insurance, super, retirement and aged care. The writing has to build trust, cut through jargon and sound like a real person who knows their stuff.
What I did
Redeveloped the brand voice. Working closely with IAS’s designer over many years, I helped reshape how IAS sounds: warm, clear and plain-spoken, and written in Jo’s voice as principal advisor. It’s the same voice whether someone is reading a blog, a LinkedIn newsletter, an eBook or a social post.
Created the Your Journey framework. I wrote Your Journey: four life stages, Starting Out, Growth and Discovery, Planning and Consolidation and Retire with Purpose, that frame financial advice as a relationship that changes as your life does. It gives every piece of content a place to sit, and gives clients a simple way to see where they are and what comes next. I’m now developing a version for business clients.
Run the monthly content program. Blogs, Jo’s LinkedIn DeepDive newsletters, social media, case studies, event copy, marketing collateral, website updates and a growing library of eBooks. Each month is built around a theme, so every piece reinforces the others. Right now that theme is Connected Advice: the idea that advice works best when every part of a client’s financial life is looked at together.
The result
The clearest measure of a framework is whether people use it. Jo tells me Your Journey now informs almost every conversation IAS has with its clients.
And the relationship itself has grown, from occasional blogs to IAS’s strategic content partner, more than a decade on.
“I have been working with Debbie for over 10 years, she is a wonderful copywriter and now I can also call her my friend. She has amazing ideas and is so clear and concise.”
Jo Brassett, Owner and Financial Advisor, Insurance Advisory Service
Want a brand voice and content program that grows with your business? Let’s talk.