Financially Blonde

The Challenge: When we met her, Shannon McLay was a financial advisor at a major bank who preferred working with smaller clients — the ones who really needed her help — despite her employer deeming them to be less important than more affluent clients. She thus launched Next Gen Financial (later morphing into The Financial Gym) to focus on providing hands-on help to populations new to money management. But how in the world could she gain traction in a world dominated by large, faceless financial services companies?

The Solution: Shannon launched a blog to empower women and young professionals to take control of their finances. She found that for her and others, the measure of their intelligence wasn’t their education, work success, or innate ability, it was their hair color — their blonde hair color, to be precise!

Shannon had had to deal with colleagues, clients, and even bosses who were amazed that she could be both blonde and financially astute. So she chose a brand name that embraced the difference, challenged stereotypes, and conveyed her unconventional approach to financial management. And we created a tongue-in-cheek logo and brand identity for Shannon and her blog that was like that of no other financial advisor.

The Outcome: We created a logo, stationery set, PPT template, and blog using a pink piggy bank as a recurring element. Sharon’s memorable brand gained traction immediately. She landed speaking gigs at high schools, colleges, and corporations, and soon commanded the audience needed to get picked up by book publisher. We are proud to share that her blog was named a finalist for the Plutus Awards (given out to personal finance blogs) in the category of Best Designed Personal Finance Blog.