abrdn is one of the UK's largest investment managers, running a 12-month media activation plan spanning institutional and intermediary audiences across eight capabilities. For four of those capabilities, they needed display advertising that would hold its own on premium publisher sites. The brief was to avoid the conventions of the category: the stock imagery, the generic straplines, the visual language that could belong to anyone.

abrdn's own design system contained an underused asset: a family of 3D spheres built for the brand but rarely seen in digital environments. Our recommendation was to put them at the centre of the work. Not as decoration, but as narrative devices, capable of carrying the specific story of each product through motion, texture, and pairing with considered copy.

The result was four distinct executions sharing a coherent identity. Each concept addressed a different audience, different product, and different investment proposition, while remaining unmistakably abrdn across every format and every placement.

abrdn used the full potential of their brand system rather than defaulting to category conventions. The 3D sphere work established a motion language their brand had not previously explored in digital advertising, giving the Investments vector a more distinctive presence across the premium publisher sites where institutional and intermediary audiences spend their time.