The future of technology, leadership and culture.

Challenge

VdA will adopt a new leadership structure. With current Managing Partner, João Vieira de Almeida becoming Senior Partner, Paula Gomes Freire, currently Group Executive Partner will formally take on a new role as Managing Partner. A Managing and Senior Partner combination is novel in VdA’s markets so we had an opportunity to take advantage of it to reinforce VdA’s brand, and create a vehicle to reaffirm VdA’s position and culture as collaborative, adaptable, innovative and forward-thinking.

Action

The idea was to create a narrative proposing that when managed brilliantly together, technology, leadership and culture can drive amazing efficiencies and sustainable success. Targeted towards global clients and prospective clients, colleagues and prospective talent, the global press and opinion leaders, the strategy was to focus this concept through a thought leadership campaign.

Research-driven, we explored the views of the future which were shared with Paula by 16 industry heavy hitters and visionaries including Santander, Allen & Overy, Google and Nova School of Business and Economics.

The design approach, centred around a printed book, was driven by the idea that technology is not the end goal, it is simply the means to the end. It’s why the creative expression takes organic illustration and applies it in a way that always blends technology and humanity. We wanted to communicate that only when this harmony is reached, is technology truly effective.

The concept that we developed opened up more channels to push the content and insights. It inspired and generated new ideas and drove interest across the industry. It led to content that lends itself to social media,
a launch event and presentation, video and a way to roll out the theme through a series of client events and conferences.

Impact

The launch, taking place only a few weeks ago, has already achieved an uplift in views on their website and social media profile, and achieved an impressive raft of media attention. Described as a ‘bold and clever design resulting in a book which enables better decisions’, the visual property has met all objectives and dramatically exceeded expectations.

“We worked with Gather in the context of a thought leadership project where the use of imagery was absolutely critical to convey and communicate our message.The team was amazing actually guiding us towards the result we wanted to achieve. The final result is outstanding and offers significant consistency, both across the board (as the same base image of ‘wave lines’ was used throughout the book, very creatively and appropriately) and vis à vis the content of the book. The feedback we have been getting from our clients alone is really impressive.”

Paula Gomes Freire, Group Executive Partner and future Managing Partner.

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