- Brand platforms rooted in core belief outperform product-led messaging
- Internal alignment is critical to credible brand storytelling
- Distinctive creative choices require strategic discipline, not just boldness
- Effective brand ideas become embedded in organisational language
- Patience and depth drive both investment success and brand building
There’s a moment in our new television commercial where a young astronomer sits alone, staring at a screen full of data that isn’t giving her answers. She’s been searching for years. Nothing is working. But instead of walking away, she leans in.
I feel that moment in my chest every time. Most people who build things know that feeling – the frustration of searching for something you believe exists, even when the evidence hasn’t arrived yet. That feeling is the heart of Old Mutual Investment Group’s new campaign, Champion the Unseen. And it resonates because it didn’t start as a campaign at all.
The star nobody noticed
We filmed at the Johannesburg Observatory for strategic reasons. In 1915, its director Robert Innes discovered Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth after the sun. It had been hiding in plain sight, so faint that nobody thought to search for it. The scientific community took years to accept the finding because the idea that something so significant could sit unnoticed seemed implausible.
That story mirrors the investment philosophy behind our brand. At OMIG, our core investment approach, Underappreciated Quality, focuses on businesses the market has overlooked or undervalued – companies with strong infrastructure, consistent delivery, and real long-term potential. The thesis is straightforward. The discipline it takes to act on it is not.
How an investment philosophy became a brand platform
Two years ago, we began an internal process we called the Brand Obsession – not a rebrand, but an interrogation of whether what we say externally reflects what happens inside the business. We kept returning to Underappreciated Quality, not only as a way of investing but as a way of seeing the world. Our people dig deeper, question consensus, and stay in the room longer than most. Once we recognised this, the creative platform revealed itself: Champion the Unseen. Not a payoff-line, but an organising principle.
We could have built the campaign around what we sell. Instead, we built it around how we think. That distinction changed everything, giving us a platform with integrity across every channel and audience rather than a message that expires with the next set of numbers.
Why we chose an astronomer
We wanted to tell a human story – not about financial services, but about what it means to keep searching when nobody else sees what you see. We needed someone whose persistence felt familiar and whose reward felt earned. Working with Clockwork and Little Big Productions, we explored multiple directions before landing on the Astronomer: a young woman who spends decades searching for something others dismissed, who faces skepticism, and who ultimately finds what was there all along – unseen but not without value.
Jacques Shalom, chief creative officer at Clockwork, said the OMIG team gave them something “genuinely honest to work with.” Suhana Gordhan helped uncover the strategic thinking by starting from the inside – understanding culture, leadership, and what drives people before seeking external expression. That patience produced something the entire organisation recognised immediately.
Four things this process taught me
Your deepest belief is your richest creative material
Product features and performance numbers matter, but they don’t make a brand distinctive over time. What made this campaign different is that it grew from a genuine conviction about how we see the world. When a platform is rooted in real belief, it holds.
The best briefs are drawn out of the business
We spent time listening to leaders, investment teams, and clients before briefing any creative partner. The temptation is to move faster, but the depth of that internal work gave the creative team something substantial to build on and gave the business ownership of the result.
Distinctiveness takes discipline
Choosing an astronomer over a conventional financial narrative required confidence. The safer route would have been easier to justify. I’m happy we held the line. Distinctiveness isn’t about being bold for its own sake; it’s about trusting the audience to meet you where the story is honest.
The real test is whether people outside marketing use the language
I knew the idea had taken root when portfolio managers started talking about “championing the unseen” unprompted. If the language lives only inside marketing, the platform hasn’t landed. When it shows up naturally in how the business talks about itself, you’ve built something that will endure.
Who built this
This work was deeply collaborative. Clockwork and Little Big Productions brought the story to life with care, while LoveSong shaped the thinking early on. Internally, the campaign was supported at every level. It wasn’t imposed by marketing; it was drawn out of the organisation. I’m grateful to everyone who shaped and believed in it before it was finished.
Our hope for this campaign
Champion the Unseen connects how we invest, how we build teams, how we engage with clients, and how we think about South Africa and the African continent. It speaks to overlooked opportunities, quiet strength, and the conviction that real value rarely announces itself.
What I hope for, beyond awareness, is a shift in how the market understands who we are – not just what we do, but why we do it. That’s a longer game and harder to measure, but it builds the kind of trust no amount of media spend can buy.
Robert Innes spent years verifying Proxima Centauri because the world couldn’t believe something significant had been hiding in plain sight. I think about that often – not only as a metaphor for our investment philosophy, but as a reminder that things worth finding usually require the most patience.
That’s the work. We look deeper. And then we look again.
Wendy Bergsteedt is head of marketing, Old Mutual Investment Group
