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Keyser

About

Keyser, an insurance agency headquartered in Kalamazoo, MI, knows that the right amount of coverage allows their clients to be more adventurous. Built on bold messaging, playful photography, and an asterisk with personality, Keyer’s insurance company branding celebrates the right risk.

Objective

As a team across over 16 locations throughout two states, it was vital for every Keyser representative to understand their unique value and approach.
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Art Direction | Brand Audit | Brand Guide | Brand Messaging | Brand Positioning | Brand Workshop | Communications Planning | Content Strategy | Copywriting | Culture Alignment | Customer Experience | Design | Design Production | Environmental Design | Graphic Design | Logo Design | Marketing Strategy | Product/Company Naming | Social Media Campaigns | Stewardship | Strategy | Web Design
Logo on a navy background. The logo says Keyser Rethink Risk.

Keyser’s bold asterisk communicates a level of playful confidence, assuring their audience to embrace life’s adventures.

Various color combinations for the Keyser logo on white and black backgrounds.
Color palette for Keyser including primary, secondary, and tiertiary colors.
Collage of images showcasing the brand guide. The left image is an open pamphlet and the page says Visual Identity. The right image includes various pages from the brand guide.

The new, quirky sensibility rethinks risk and goes where no other insurance company branding has gone before.

Collage of images showing the marketing design. The left image is a billboard that says "Insurance Making You Nervous? Read the fine print." with a pug on the left. The right images include a poster of a body builder with the "Covered?" phrase over his waist. The bottom image shows an ice cream cone stacked with scoops and the word "Risky" over it.
Zoom in of a magazine spread. The page is an image of an ice cream cone with a tall amount of ice cream scoops and the word, "Risky?" written on top of it.
Fence wrap showing 2 different designs. The left wrap says "Lets talk about coverage." The right wrap says, "Dare to be different. Keyser." Different is crossed out and replaced with Keyser.
Billboard that says, "Dare to be different. Keyser." Different is crossed out and replaced with Keyser. Yellow baseball cap image on the right that has the Keyser asterisk brand on.

“At the end of our first meeting with Circa I said, ‘We want to work with someone who cares about our brand as much as we do.’ That is one hundred percent what we got with Circa.”

Chris Fisher
CEO, Keyser

Blue truck with the Keyser asterisk on the side, and the Keyser logo.

Return on Creative

100%

Within budget.

3

Month timeline.

16

Locations and sub-brands.

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Work with Circa

Keyser needed a daring brand that celebrates their unique position. This insurance company branding doesn’t take a typical approach to risk and coverage. Using a combination of nostalgic imagery and personified animals, the direction invites a new view of risk. Six scoops of ice cream… Risky? Absolutely! But, it sure looks fun! 

The engagement included the following:

Brand Workshop | Aligning the disparate teams around the core value offering and brand refresh required input and buy-in. Circa hosted a brand round table with key team members ranging from top-performing agents, executives, administration, and one of the most tenured employees. The round table surveyed current brand successes, areas of confusion, opportunities for alignment, and potential challenges in a brand refresh. This set the foundation for the brand messaging, the brand playbook, and the brand launch campaign.

Logo Redesign | The original Keyser brand dated back to 1935. Circa was given the directive of an iceberg, a popular metaphor used by the CEO to describe the unseen risk that Keyser covers. Circa translated the iceberg metaphor into an asterisk, a glyph that, like the iceberg, symbolizes the importance of what isn’t seen, in this case, the small print. The mega-asterisk speaks to the expertise of the team, and how they make the process fun. It celebrates the right amount of risk in a playful adventurous tone

Brand Guide | Aligning 16 offices across two states required extensive brand architecture. The brand playbook included location sub-brands and brand iterations for the client marketing team to implement during the brand launch. Direction and sample applications for print collateral, marketing collateral, and social media campaigns all empowered the internal team with brand ownership.

Brand Messaging | Breaking away from the typical insurance jargon, Keyser’s messaging included a tagline: “Rethink risk”. Headlines like: “Dare to be different.” and “Play it safe.” and a bank of adventure-oriented call-to-actions invite the audience into the narrative while establishing the expertise within Keyser. 

Within a year of implementing their new brand, Keyser gained international attention from one the leading insurance brands, Acrisure, which was looking to acquire, “growing firms, with professional staff, infrastructure, (and) proven profitability.” Currently valued at 10.8 M, the Keyser brand continues to make a bold impression as a stand-out insurance agency.