For most marketers, a career is spent operating within clearly defined boundaries of established brand guidelines, set tone-of-voice rules and layers of legacy built up over decades. The opportunity to start with a truly blank slate is vanishingly rare.
But in November 2021, that is exactly what happened when Allspring branched out from Wells Fargo. Formerly the bank’s asset management division, the business was carved out and established as a standalone, independent firm, owned by private equity groups GTCR LLC and Reverence Capital Partners.
The challenge was unusual. While the global asset manager could trace its investment heritage back nearly 100 years to the launch of its first funds in 1935, Allspring itself did not yet exist as a brand.
There was no name, no logo, no mission statement, just a deep history, long-standing track records and experienced portfolio management teams.
For Kelly Vives, chief marketing and communications officer at Allspring, it was a once-in-a-career opportunity: a blank piece of paper. Her task was to build a brand from the ground up, crafting a new narrative while remaining faithful to the firm’s roots and heritage.
“It’s been an interesting journey, particularly from a marketing and brand standpoint, to refresh your story, tell a new story but stay true to the roots and heritage of the firm,” she says.
“We’ve had to carve out from a big bank and build a more tech-enabled platform for our investment teams and our distribution teams. It’s been a lot of work, but now we’re a standalone, privately owned firm competing in a very crowded space.”
Since becoming Allspring, the firm has grown to manage over $600 billion in assets, with more than 370 investment professionals across 19 global offices, alongside 450 new hires.
With scale that is “big enough to matter” yet small enough to stay nimble, the opportunity is clear but so is the challenge. Vives’ focus has shifted from building the brand to putting it on the map, driving awareness in one of the most competitive corners of financial services.
But to understand that journey, it’s worth going back to where it all began: a blank piece of paper.
Assembling the team
With the task of building a brand from scratch, Vives’ first priority was people. That meant not only bringing colleagues across from Wells Fargo, but also hiring new talent quickly to keep pace with the scale and speed of the carve-out.
“You have to hire people to help you because it was fast and furious andit’s rare in a marketer’s life that they get handed a white sheet of paper to be able to name the firm, mission, vision, values, visual and verbal identity, logo, and the go to market strategy,” she says.
That focus on getting the right people in place extended beyond the organisation itself. Vives knew early on that Allspring would need an external partner to help shape and build the brand but choosing one required careful navigation.
From there, a formal request for proposal (RFP) process was launched. Agencies were invited to submit bids, which Vives narrowed to four contenders before whittling the list down to two based on their presentations and capabilities.
According to Vives, timing worked in her favour during this process. Although the deal had been announced, it had not yet closed, giving her the space to begin early-stage brand conversations and lay the groundwork before Allspring officially stood on its own.
Senior leadership was also closely involved throughout. A small decision-making group, including representatives from the new private equity owners, the incoming chairman, the CEO at the time and Vives herself, helped guide the final choice of partner.
That process ultimately led to the selection of global brand consultancy Wolff Olins, an agency known for shaping some of the most recognisable brands, including Virgin and Uber. For Vives, firm stood out precisely because it didn’t look like a typical financial services agency.
“I decided to go a little bit out of category,” she says. “I didn’t want to pick your standard financial services brand so when companies showed up with a huge roster of all the financial firms they had worked with, that wasn’t an actual differentiator.”
Naming with purpose
Once the partner was chosen, the focus shifted to building the brand itself. While many would assume naming the firm would come first, Vives leaned on her experience from rebrands and product revamps at UBS and Wells Fargo – even if those projects had never involved a full entity – and started with the brand strategy instead.
“You ground it in the strategy of what’s our mission statement? What’s our vision? What do we want to be? What do we want to be known for? What are our differentiators?” she explains.
“We landed on the mission and vision and values of the firm, and then once you ground yourself with that, you can start on the name.”
The next step of naming the firm proved an enduring process, Vives jokes. Around 2,700 names were considered, and deciding on a final choice was difficult as name selection is inherently subjective.
“We started going through the naming process at our town hall, I joked this was like naming a child and the name has to be something that nobody else in the world is named and all of your aunts, uncles and cousins have to sign off,” she says.
Complicating matters further was the approval process. Any chosen name had to pass muster with the two private equity owners and navigate a complex legal matrix across the 30+ [KV2.1]countries where the firm would be registered.
Ultimately, the name Allspring was chosen for several reasons. In particular, Vives says she was “dogmatic” about picking a name starting with the letter “A” to ensure visibility as a new brand.
“When you sponsor things, your logo is at the top of the list. When a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley or Merrill Lunch is looking for a product, we show up first in Morningstar or in Bloomberg.
We also launched a suite of ETFs and the tickers all start with an “A” so we show up first,” she explains.
According to Vives, this process demonstrated the unique advantage of launching a new brand because she had the freedom to push for a name that worked strategically, without the constraints of a historical or founder’s name.
Beyond that, Allspring felt both familiar and fresh, reflecting the firm’s value proposition.
With the brand strategy, which incorporated the brand’s vision, mission and values, in place, the team could then move through the next steps of finalising the name, designing the visual identity and logo and preparing for the eventual unveiling.
Building the brand together
Vives emphasises that building a brand isn’t just about strategy and visuals, it’s also about people. From the start, engaging the team was a priority, which was a strategy recommended by Wolff Olins to ensure everyone felt part of the journey.
“We really wanted to bring the employees along with us on the journey, so we would do employee unveilings throughout the process before we went external to drive internal excitment and reinforce that we are on this journey together,” she says.
That approach has paid off over the long term, creating a sense of shared ownership and connection among the employee base.
Vives points out that having this shared experience has been profoundly meaningful for a handful of executives who were part of the process from the beginning.
“It was the hardest but most rewarding period of my career,” she says. “And I remind my team to pause, especially at the end of the year, and look back at the year and the last four years.”
This focus on inclusion, she notes, has helped ensure that the brand isn’t just something that exists externally, instead it’s something the whole team lives and breathes.
Every interaction counts
Now that the brand is established, the next challenge is ensuring it’s known for something. Vives says Allspring has a unique advantage because its still building, therefore people don’t yet have preconceived notions about the firm.
That’s very different from large, established firms where customers often form opinions before even interacting. Whether through previous experiences or headlines in the news, people form opinions before they walk in the room.
“It’s like an empty vessel,” she explains so the firm has the power to shape what people think about the brand from the ground up. Therefore, Vives ensures that every interaction with the brand reinforces that positivity.
“I keep saying to my teams, every touch point, every interaction, every digital click we are building trust in the brand and brand trust is a strong consideration that aids buyers in making their decision,” she says.
When it comes to what the brand wants to be known for, Vives says one mantra always comes back is “investment performance is expected but not sufficient.”
Strong investment returns alone aren’t enough. There’s a whole ecosystem around the client experience so while Allspring’s top priority is delivering investment excellence, it is supported by two other pillars: client partnership excellence and platform excellence, according to Vives.
“Platform excellence is our operations, our technology and our people and there’s a whole ecosystem to deliver the elevated experience,” she says.
“We want people to know us as an almost 100-year old investment house, we have a strong investment platform and we want people to recognize us as a trusted partner – We’ll go above and beyond, we’ll be creative in our solutions.”
The experience is what keeps clients loyal through both good times and bad, she explains. Investment markets are inherently volatile, rising and falling over time, so Allspring focuses on building long-term relationships that can weather those fluctuations.
This approach reinforces the importance of ensuring every touchpoint with the brand communicates that commitment, even down to the small details that might not be immediately obvious, she adds.
“Even when we’re designing the office spaces and when we’re brainstorming the booths for a conference, we want it to feel warm and inviting and a comfortable place that you want to be with others and build relationships,” she says.
That long-term perspective is crucial because Allspring isn’t focused on short-term sales. Instead, it aims to cultivate meaningful, lasting relationships with financial advisors, institutions and consultants alike, according to Vives.
Embedding the brand from inside out
Much like she brought employees along during the creation of the brand, Vives continues to involve them in making sure every brand touchpoint delivers something positive.
“We’ve made a really big effort with employees, as they are our number one brand ambassadors. It’s not only our employees that are speaking to clients, like our investment teams and sales teams, it’s everyone,” she says.
“It’s someone that is on my team working with a reporter. It’s somebody that’s an operations team working with one of our third-party vendors on trade execution. All of that is your brand. Even what you say at the Thanksgiving dinner table, when your uncle is a financial advisor.”
To achieve this, Vives has focused on empowering employees as brand ambassadors, giving them the tools and messaging to confidently share Allspring’s story and narrative.
Corporate values play a key role in this, reinforced through quarterly awards at the all-hands town hall meetings. Each value is recognised, and peers vote for colleagues who embody it.
For example, one value celebrates “making our differences thedifference” by appreciating diverse opinions. Employees who exemplify this value for the year receive an award, helping make the language and values part of the internal narrative.
This approach ensures that values become part of our fabric, embedded so deeply into employees’ day-to-day work that they can confidently communicate them. In addition, repetition of these values is key, Vives says.
“It’s my mantra when running communications that nobody reads or listens, so you have to be persistent and consistent in what you’re saying. The more you can reiterate, remind, reinforce and use the same language, the more people will retain it,” she says.
“We have an engaged employee base, and we’re trying to find new and creative ways to connect with them and up level their training and skills and continue to give them new narratives to share with the market.”
When it comes to communicating the value proposition to clients, Vives stresses that messages shouldn’t be simply repeated. Instead, sales teams and other client-facing staff are encouraged to personalise the narrative.
She provides the top-level bullets that should remain consistent but asks her teams to make the message their own. Her role is to get people 80% of the way there and then it’s down to the team to do the rest to really make it resonate.
“Take investment excellence, platform excellence and client partnership excellence. Somebody that’s pitching to a financial advisor is going to have a different narrative storyline and proof points around client partnership excellence that’s specific to a financial advisor than somebody who’s going to speak to an insurance company,” she says.
From a digital perspective, Vives ensures messaging aligns across channels, but client-facing teams are also responsible for authentic personalisation at every touch point.
“Every click, everything they [clients] read aligns with what their salesperson is saying to them, but it should feel personal to the salesperson or the investment team, so that it’s more authentic,” she says.
“Authenticity is really important to me in terms of the brand, the go-to-market and then the way that our sales and investment teams engage with clients.”
Turning brand into business growth
At Allspring, marketing isn’t just a function, it’s the thread that connects the entire organisation. Vives emphasises that to ensure every brand touchpoint delivers a consistent, positive experience, marketing must integrate closely with all teams, not operate in isolation.
“I have a channel marketing team, and I tell them that they are a part of that sales team. They’re presenting on every call, they’re attending the events and meeting the clients,” she says.
“I see us as an internal enabler where we’re integrating ourselves, but then our job is to connect the dots across all of it and then tailor that for our commercial focus.”
This approach goes beyond the traditional view of marketing as a support function. While marketing at Allspring does produce the necessary fact sheets, commentaries and pitch books to support the sales team, Vives sees its role as far more strategic.
“Our job is looking at the future. A lot of times, the sales teams have sales goals and look at the immediate market trends and how they can drive revenue in the near term,” she says.
“But I need to be thinking about what do we do about next gen? How do we think about building a longer term, sustainable business? There’s a strategic element of the role as well as being the steward of creativity within the firm.”
The importance of this approach was magnified during the creation of the Allspring brand. Because the carve-out required building a narrative from scratch, marketing wasn’t just executing communications, it was helping shape the firm’s identity, strategy and future.
Vives notes that the private equity partners recognised this, understanding that a strong, well-crafted brand would be a critical driver for growth, credibility and long-term client trust.
Ultimately, Vives sees marketing not just as a support function but as a true driver of growth. By building the brand from scratch, connecting teams and shaping every touchpoint, marketing has the power to define the firm’s narrative, influence long-term strategy and create sustainable opportunities.
In doing so, Allspring ensures that every interaction – whether that’s internal or external -reinforces the brand, builds trust and drives the business forward.
Financial marketers and communications leaders who have delivered standout work in the US market are encouraged to enter the Financial Promoter Awards USA 2026, entries open until 10 April.
This story appeared in Issue 15 of the Financial Promoter magazine. To be one of the first to read it, subscribe here: Subscribe – Financial Promoter