Case Study: T. Rowe Price

The right tools help the global asset management firm build a brand that works.

When it’s better to buy than build

Stalwart asset management firm T. Rowe Price encourages clients to “invest with confidence.” The experience its people deliver to clients is critical to how the brand is perceived. The markets go up and down, but associates need to reliably deliver excellence in helping clients achieve their financial goals—that’s what inspires confidence.

T. Rowe Price’s brand team knows that the brand is made from every interaction each of its 8,600 associates have with their clients. Simply put, if everyone with T. Rowe Price in their email signature isn’t 100 percent committed to delivering on the T. Rowe Price brand experience at every touchpoint, the brand isn’t as strong as it should be.

Unwieldy and unintuitive, the internally built brand center just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Keeping it fresh and relevant was a priority for the brand team. But following the initial development and deployment period, the IT team soon faced a multitude of competing priorities and could no longer serve as a dedicated resource for updating and improving the center. With a distributed workforce spread across 16 offices over four continents, the brand team needed an effective, engaging method to deliver and govern the brand, one that freed up the IT team and empowered associates by making the brand easy to use.

A brand (and brand center) that works

With a little outside help from Beam, the brand team transformed their clunky brand center into a living, breathing hub with the full capability to support their ambitious brand governance vision. They even gave it a name to match their promise to deliver a “brand that works”: BrandWorks. Since launching in 2016, the new platform, built on Beam, has been every associate’s go-to for all things brand.

On BrandWorks they’ll find detailed information about facets of the brand framework, including the brand promise, brand persona and brand values; assets like logos and PowerPoint templates; and guidelines on employing the brand voice and visual identity. The digital experience guide is leading-edge, bridging the gap that so often divides marketing and digital teams with a comprehensive set of digital guidelines complete with editable CSS and HTML code, created using the atomic design methodology.

BrandWorks is brimming with content created to both engage associates and drive behavioral changes that will positively affect clients’ experiences of the T. Rowe Price brand.

The “Your Role” video packs an empowering punch, reaching out and demonstrating to every associate how essential they are to bringing the brand to life. The “Evolution of a Symbol” video educates internal audiences about the changes made to Trusty the bighorn sheep, T. Rowe Price’s equivalent of the Starbucks siren. Viewers of the video will come away with an understanding of what precipitated the new streamlined design—the need to better translate across all mediums and maintain sharp resolution digitally—and how to properly apply the symbol. Among the other content in this vein is a filterable repository of leadership quotes, as well as latest accolades—which at T. Rowe Price are awards or honors that enhance core messages about the company, its brand and its products, and have relevance with its key audiences.

Face-to-face trainings enhance virtual capabilities

The T. Rowe brand team takes a progressive approach to brand governance, one that’s less about enforcing compliance and more focused on offering strategic solutions. Brand is given broad-strokes exposure during every associate’s onboarding, but the brand team’s twice-yearly brand training sessions for marketers and content creators take it to another level. New and seasoned marketers alike attend these sessions to dive deep into the brand and receive intensive BrandWorks training.

Because the platform is flexible and user-friendly, demands on the IT team have abated; keeping it fresh is no longer on their long list of to-dos. Instead, T. Rowe Price’s brand team is actively augmenting and adjusting to increase site functionality and value. Among their top priorities has been creating clarity in the navigation, refining the placement of the different content areas to really narrow into brand assets.

There’s no such thing as a finished brand center—and that’s a good thing. The brand team is now focusing on promoting BrandWorks and integrating it into the daily workflow of internal audiences—key factors to increasing usage of the platform and thereby sustaining the brand. In addition to showcasing BrandWorks on the corporate intranet, the team wants to use the platform’s email capabilities, to keep users informed of new site developments and content. They also want to add analytical capacity to understand user journeys, so they can recognize where people are falling off and whether they’re getting to where they need to go.

T. Rowe Price’s tack to brand governance is ever-evolving, and in BrandWorks the company has a platform that has no trouble keeping up. And this iterative approach has reaped returns: In 2017, Fortune named T. Rowe Price one of the most admired companies in the world. Talk about an accolade that will inspire confidence.

T. Rowe Price’s tack to brand governance is ever-evolving, and in BrandWorks the company has a platform that has no trouble keeping up.

8,600 associates

T. Rowe Price’s workforce accesses BrandWorks across 16 offices over 4 continents.

49,118 views

T. Rowe Price’s voice, visual and digital guidelines have been viewed on average 5 times per employee over the last 12 months.

117% engagement

In the last 12 months, more than 10,000 unique visitors have logged in to BrandWorks.

Contact Us

Let's Connect

Have questions or want to learn more about how Beam can help your business? Get in touch with us today. We're here to help you navigate the digital landscape with ease.