The start of a new year is a great time to do a quick check up on your firm’s visual and digital identity. Here are five questions we recommend asking at least once a year.

Are the PDF documents your firm uses accessible? The client-facing documents firms share the most – Fact Sheets, Statements, and Pitch Books, often created using Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, are not naturally accessible. This means that people using assistive technologies (such as a screen reader) cannot accurately consume the content.

In honor of being named to the 2023 Adweek List of Fastest Growing Agencies (read more here), we sat down with Emerson Ward Founder and Creative Director Brian Ward to discuss the agency, design trends in asset management, and more.

This week, we are continuing our series on website design for asset management firms by exploring this popular (and sometimes hotly contested) design question – to scroll or not to scroll.

Scrolling has been a mainstay on websites for decades so it may seem like an odd debate to be having. However, mobile technology and advances in website development are pushing what’s possible and popular for website design and raising everyone’s expectations. Ensuring that your website makes a positive first impression for your firm is key. Let’s get into the debate.

There are 300 million color blind people globally. It is estimated that 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have the condition. That might seem like a small group of people to consider when designing your asset management content. But it’s not.

The first rule of designing content-heavy slides is to do whatever possible to avoid them. Be ruthless with the volume of information in the presentation—if it’s not necessary, delete it.

Determining the visual identity for your ESG strategy and progress takes careful planning and thought. It can’t be an afterthought, nor can it be a simple addition of more greens and blues in your color palette.

Ensuring that the web remains accessible to all is the responsibility of everyone who creates content – asset management firms included.  With legislative changes, evolving best practices and technology advances, keeping up with accessibility can feel overwhelming, especially for firms that haven’t updated their website recently.

Imagery plays a major role in setting the tone for your brand and collateral. It can be calming, lend credibility, inspire confidence, and help your firm stand out. Or it can do the exact opposite.

On April 1^st, Emerson Ward celebrated our 7^th Anniversary!  

What started off as a simple idea to bring to high-quality, knowledgeable design to the asset management ecosystem has grown beyond our expectations. In many cultures, 7 is considered a lucky or important number.

For us it’s both.

Today we launched a new video production service at Emerson Ward. From firm introductory videos to videos highlighting your perspective on fund performance or brag reels for recruitment, we now offer a full set of video production, training, and consulting capabilities.

This is an exciting moment for our growing agency, and we are proud to be expanding the services we offer to you.

Colors evoke different meanings, connotations, and emotional reactions in people. While these reactions and meanings vary across cultures, one thing never varies — color is powerful. And your firm’s marketing materials are not immune. Selecting the right color palette is essential for expressing your firm’s perspective.

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Accessibility standards improve websites for everyone while delivering significant business benefits. We recently shared our perspective on the importance of these standards for hedge funds and other asset management firms.

Whether it is the recent rise in website accessibility lawsuits (they hit an all-time high in 2021)^* or the emergence of new tech solutions to help businesses address concerns, website accessibility is generating a lot of discussion.  And for good reason. There are one billion people around the world who have some form of disability.^** Ensuring that the web remains accessible to all is the responsibility of everyone who creates content – asset management firms included.

Whether you are launching a new fund or celebrating the 10th anniversary of your firm, it can be challenging to know when to engage creative partners.

The key for any firm is to engage with creative professionals when strategic design advice can set you up for growth and improve your image versus saving you from bad design choices that negatively impact your reputation and professionalism.  But how do you know where that sweet spot is?

Have you ever seen a print advertisement or sign and wondered what were they thinking? As design experts, this happens to us almost every day. While we also see plenty of beautiful design work, we’ve found that behind many bad designs is a good idea that failed in the execution phase.‍

Google recently introduced an update called "Helpful Content". It is designed to prioritize content that helps the reader achieve a specific goal. Regardless of the size of your firm if you have a website, you need to pay attention to this update and any changes it may have on your search ranking.

When it comes to attracting new clients, numbers play a small part in the big picture. While that may sound counterintuitive, consider that everyone in this industry can put up numbers. They are in many ways the bare minimum needed to be a viable option. We believe the key to attracting new prospects and clients lies in your ability to differentiate your brand.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been analyzing one of the most powerful tools in a hedge fund marketer’s toolkit – the pitchbook. In part one we broke down the qualitative elements that should make up the first half of the document. In part two, we examined best practices for the quantitative or more concrete data-heavy aspects of the document. Now, it’s time to look at our favorite topic – design.

In last week’s post, we walked through the qualitative elements that exist in the first half of standard hedge fund pitchbooks. This week, we’re digging into the second half of the document – the 8-10 slides that provide the concrete details, statistics, and information on how you’ve constructed your portfolio, how it’s performed relative to the benchmark, and how to invest. These slides are your closing argument. They give you the opportunity to show your work and prove your investment thesis while providing potential investors with the data needed to evaluate your strategy.

Here at Emerson Ward, the most frequently asked questions we receive when discussing a hedge fund pitchbook design project with a new or prospective client center around content and structure: How many slides are too many? What content should be included? What’s the difference between “Philosophy” and “Strategy”? The answers always vary – each presentation will be unique to your strategy, firm, audience, and where you are in the fundraising lifecycle – but generally, these presentations all share the same DNA; a basic structure and flow designed to succinctly explain a complex investment offering.

There are 30 million PowerPoint presentations created around the world every day. As a creative services agency focused on the asset management industry, we’ve built and reviewed our fair share of that number.  

Recently we explored the business, technology and human factors driving the increased importance of mobile-optimized websites for asset management firms. Now that we’ve explored why mobile-friendly websites are vital, let’s continue the conversation with a few how-to tips and considerations.‍

There are many factors to consider in asset management website design. A website must showcase the firm’s unique brand, perspective, people and offerings. It should be easy to navigate and clearly display data, be visually stunning and encourage visitors to stay on the site and get to know the firm in greater detail. However, to be competitive in today’s crowded marketplace there is another factor that can no longer be overlooked – how your site performs on mobile devices.

We’ve sat in the audience staring at poorly designed slides and we’ve experienced the pitfalls of every plan, idea and document in business being turned into a slide deck. While frustrating and at times painful, that’s just one side of the PowerPoint (or PPT as fans call it) story.

When should an asset management firm’s website design, logo or overall brand identity be updated? Is there a standard time to update the look of your hedge fund’s pitch book? What trends are you seeing out there?

There’s a naturally symbiotic relationship between data and design. It’s at the meeting of the two where effective, impactful communication is born, which is why the partnership between Assette and Emerson Ward, announced earlier today, is such a natural fit.