Royal London is a brand with over 150 years of history. And as a Mutual it does not have a traditional shareholder, profit relationship. It has a key distinctive brand asset in Gilbert a Pelican found in its logo. Gilbert was brought to life in the Mutuality Campaign by McCann in 2023. However only a handful of static assets were created alongside the campaign, which led to Gilbert being under-utilised.
The wider Financial Services sector and especially the Pension sector is a category that is dominated by generic stock imagery. A sea of beige that is hard to stand out in, exacerbated by audiences shift to digital-first expectations across B2B and B2C.
Without evolving the brand, Royal London risked heritage without modernisation. They developed a strong visual campaign in 2023. However it was only a single campaign. There was no strategy or creative plan for it to scale across comms further down the funnel.
The new digital Gilbert was created in proprietary 3D software, which led to his use being slow, costly and unscalable, making the growth of brand recognition difficult. This was at a time when challenger brands moved faster with greater budget flexibility.
I identified the opportunity to transform digital Gilbert from a one-off campaign element into the cornerstone of a scalable, digital-first brand world. Along with the Purple World within the Mutuality campaign that could scale down the funnel. Creating another distinctive brand assets that could be consistent, even in comms where Gilbert is not appropriate. My focus was on creating an approach that delivered both distinctiveness in a crowded sector and efficiency for day-to-day marketing.
To achieve this, I explored how emerging creative technologies could modernise Royal London’s production pipeline. By shifting from proprietary 3D tools to open-source and real-time engines such as Blender and Unreal Engine, we could replicate the high-quality aesthetic of the Mutuality campaign while dramatically reducing time and cost. I also considered how Generative AI could support the expansion of brand assets at scale, giving internal teams a faster and more flexible toolkit.
Alongside the technical solution, I developed a tiered production model:
Ensuring the brand’s spirit was carried through every touchpoint.
This combination of creative strategy and technical innovation provided Royal London with a roadmap for evolving Gilbert into a truly ownable, future-ready brand asset — one capable of increasing salience, reducing reliance on stock imagery, and positioning the company as a modern, digitally-forward player in financial services.
