Context

Every year the leading asset managers in the Netherlands gather at the most prestigious industry event of the year to present their standout funds to an audience of industry professionals, high net-worth individuals and other key stakeholders, with each company vying to establish themselves as the best choice for any potential investors or partners in the audience. Our clients approached us in the run-up to this event, looking to showcase an innovative fund that relies on a complex quantitative strategy, and impress upon the audience the rigor and intensiveness of their approach that ultimately led to an impressive track record of returns.

Challenge

The starting point for this project was the original pitch book that our clients had been using to explain their fund to potential investors. While extremely comprehensive, the slides were very information-dense, often combining complex charts, tables and text on the same page - overwhelming the audience, especially during the most important section that was intended to differentiate their fund from its competitors.

A slide from the original presentation for reference. Branding removed to preserve anonymity.

Our services were enlisted to make the story of their fund come to life, and to aid in finding a way to break down their process - explaining the individual steps in a visually intuitive way that would form the centrepiece of their presentation.

In preparation for this project, we reviewed existing fund materials and conducted deep-brief sessions with the Portfolio Management team to ensure we had a deep understanding of the product. Finally, we engaged with the speaker for the event to tailor it to their presentation style & preferences.

Our focus was on simplifying and visualising the complex quantitative investment process in such a way that anyone in the audience could understand it, without taking away from the process itself. As such, we broke it down into smaller components and thought critically about how to dynamically visualise the steps in the most intuitive way possible.

How we broke down the original slide shown above into an engaging step-by-step process that aids the presenter in explaining a complex process.

The resulting audience ratings of the presentation speak for themselves:

93% approval rating received from the audience*, the highest of any presentation during the event

*As indicated from a post-event questionnaire, which revealed an overall average approval rating of 66 percent for the rest.

The intangible benefits were very clear to our clients:

• Increased audience engagement and understanding of their product
• Clearly communicated the brand value of their company as a leader in the space
• Put the spotlight on their impressive capabilities even in an event filled with the leading asset managers in the country
• Created valuable content that can be recycled and reused for a variety of pitches in the future

Interested in standing out from the crowd?