Breathing new life into insurance

Business objectivesAcquisition, Build awareness, Shape perceptions
YF Life
Branding
Advisory
Identity
Logo
Messaging framework
Story
Strategy
System Communications

Acquisition offers opportunity for a new start

YF Life is a fintech-driven life insurance firm. YF Life is part of the Yunfeng Financial Group, founded and chaired by Jack Ma of Alibaba Group, the world’s largest retailer and e-commerce company.

Yunfeng Financial Group acquired MassMutual Asia, the APAC branch of global insurance firm MassMutual, to build their bold vision for insurance and investing. Introducing their tech-focused offering to customers, the public, and the original team required an approach that would make the change a promising, exciting opportunity for everyone.

For the transition from MMA to YF Life, Stepworks engineered a strategy and identity system to align their offering with multiple audiences.

Founder and chairman of the Yunfeng Financial Group Jack Ma attended YF Life’s brand launch event as one of its key officiators

Value created

Reassured stakeholders – YF Life’s motivational positioning phrase, Own the future, helped multiple audiences get behind the change in business direction and embrace the unknown with confidence.

Manageable simplicity – YF Life’s logo inspired a simple, flexible identity system, which was quickly applied to YF Life’s materials within the short transition period.

Promising positioning – The new brand accurately reflected the daring ambitions of the firm, differentiating their offering in a parity market.

yf-life-new-brand-positioning-phrase
YF Life’s positioning phrase conveys many positive attributes – independence, resilience, opportunity – that makes sense to multiple audiences
YF Life’s design language reflects its enthusiastic positioning phrase
The rising triangle graphics convey progress and optimism
The new brand quickly and easily translated to YF Life’s numerous communication touchpoints
Supporting graphics of stylised objects were created from a pattern of triangles, making YF Life’s design language more recognisable
Branding Communications
Corporate
Employer branding

Giving insurance a valuable edge

Hong Kong is a market saturated with insurance brands. YF Life’s new brand had to make sense to audiences, both internal and external, in a way that instilled confidence, clarity and understanding.

To support and explain the change in direction to its audiences, YF Life published an official brand story. This was shared internally and later released on its website for its launch. Central to the reframing of perceptions was the brand’s positioning phrase, Own the future, which had to capture multiple meanings that would resonate with the brand’s different audiences.

One of YF Life’s most important touchpoints, its sales brochures, were changed to reflect the revised brand strategy. A down-to-earth tone of voice, simplified infographics and consistent design helped make insurance feel empowering for customers.

Value created

Internal buy-in – Acquisitions aren’t easy to accept. The incumbent team needed to feel confident and optimistic about the new order. The brand story was carefully written to be relevant to the team’s existing cultural values and motivate them to get behind the change.

Deeper meaning – A simple, powerful message helped many people relate to the new direction. It resonated with their personal values. This helped audiences connect with what the firm envisioned for the category.

Clarified point of view – Part of expressing the brand strategy involves defining the tone and manner of a brand. A friendlier, less-intimidating approach to insurance helps to differentiate YF Life’s offering.

Photo of a guy wrapping his arms in MMA/boxing wraps for new brand
Photo of a businessman smiling while sitting with an iPad for new brand
Stepworks led the photoshoot for a YF Life campaign key visual featuring Hong Kong sports celebrity Rex Tso
A versatile colour palette helped to further differentiate YF Life’s numerous insurance products
Concept of YF Life rebrand icons for brochure
Concept gif of pages for YF Life's rebranded brochure
Easy to understand copywriting, graphics and iconography made YF Life’s sales brochures more engaging, clear and consistent
YF Life’s marcoms system makes it easy for the insurer to produce on-brand campaigns in-house
“I find YF Life’s brochures a lot easier to understand compared to other insurance companies’.”

Ms Han, YF Life customer

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