Count is one of Australia’s leading integrated providers of accounting and wealth services. With a new CEO and organisational strategy, Count approached Good Behaviour to help articulate what they stood for and revitalise how they were presenting themselves to the world.
A key theme coming out of our initial exploration work was concept of time. Count needed to embrace a proud history of more than forty years helping clients reach their goals, while simultaneously reflecting the future-focus nature of their core value proposition.
Across extensive stakeholder discovery, we found a dynamic perspective of time was the thread stitching accounting and wealth planning together with the story of Count’s impressive past growth and bright future.
Data insights from Count suggest that every Australian should make a financial plan to live to one hundred. But years of Behavioural Science research demonstrates how attached we are to instant gratification and living in the now. Our perceptions of time affect our behaviour and decision making, especially in the realm of financial decision making.
The most obvious example of this is Present Bias, where we generally favour immediate rewards over later rewards even where the immediate reward is smaller. Present Bias can confound our best laid financial plans.
Time also plays a role in other well explored behavioural biases. Our tendency to avoid uncertainty and loss is also, at its heart, driven by how we see our future.
Old-school economists sometimes call these biases ‘irrational’, but they have evolved over time for good reasons. They have kept us safe or allowed us to grasp opportunity across millennia. And this deep-seated lodgement means our biases are not particularly easy to overcome, even when doing so would improve long-term wellbeing.
Count advisers help their clients overcome these biases by delivering the dynamic perspective: looking at their past, present and future in equal measure to help build a financial plan to live to one hundred.
The long-term benefits of this plan are clear, a financially and personally happy and healthy later life. And in the short-term, having a clear view on your finances and a plan for the future also helps mitigate stress and improves decision making. All of which, creates a virtuous cycle.
The inverse is also true, stress makes us more present focussed and less attentive to the full range of options available to us.
Viewed through this lens, by providing their clients with a dynamic perspective of their past and present with a plan for the future, Count’s integrated offer gives their clients the confidence to look ahead.
A new logo was developed to bolster this value proposition. Made up of four arcs of different fields of vision, each representing one of the multiple perspectives Count provides to their clients.
This brand identity was further brought to life across Count’s digital platforms. The logo is animated and adapts to different environments with both colour and motion, eventually settling into its final position. Delivering a dynamic representation of how Count ensures each individual client has the most effective financial plan for them.
While in the growing number of member firm offices, reception to the new brand has been positive, with five locations already adopting the new branding and more on the way. Most importantly, it’s given the brand a clear articulation and point of distinction in an increasingly noisy market, helping open up the opportunity for more people to enjoy the benefits of sound financial management and advice.
