HOLLARD INSURANCE The Book of Brand Bravery: rewriting what an insurance brand sounds like

CI guide concept, creative direction, and copywriting for one of South Africa's most distinctive and fearless financial services brands.

THE STORY

Insurance brands are not, historically, known for their bravery.

They tend to sound cautious, careful, slightly nervous about saying anything too interesting in case someone holds them to it. Which makes a kind of sense. Except that Hollard, one of South Africa's largest and most innovative insurance groups, had always been different, and they knew it. They just needed someone to help them say so out loud.

The brief was to create a CI guide. What I made instead was a book. I called it The Book of Brand Bravery, and from the opening line, it made clear that this was not going to be another corporate identity document that lived in a shared drive and was never opened again.

The guide defined Hollard's personality as lionhearted, challenging, and inventive. Warm without being soft. Bold without being arrogant. Genuinely funny in places where most financial brands would never dare to go. Every section was written to be read, not just referenced. Because a brand guide only works if people actually want to open it.

I murdered a lot of darlings getting this one right. Every line that was slightly too clever, slightly too safe, slightly too much like something another brand might say got cut. What was left was something that only Hollard could have said.

That's always the goal.

WHAT IT TAUGHT ME

That the most powerful thing you can do for a brand is give the people inside it something to believe in. The CI guide is where that belief either lives or dies.