PricewaterhouseCoopers, East Caribbean (PwCEC)
Why did the strait-laced CA’s pick up Goldilocks?

Case History
PriceWaterhouse East Caribbean (PwCEC) came to us in 1994, seeking counsel on how to better penetrate the North American market. PwCEC helps its clients hang on to as much of their earned money as possible. In the words of one executive, “Tax avoidance is legal; tax evasion is not. We are experts in the former and need to find ways of letting people know how we can help them avoid as much tax as possible”.

We recommended they go after the people who make such recommendations to their own clients, i.e. the lawyers and accountants. Made sense, but we knew that sending the message through a third party was akin to playing that well-loved child’s game, “broken telephone”. How could we minimize the risk of the message not being delivered correctly? How could we make it easy for people to recommend PwCEC?

To this end we created a sales kit that could be used at conferences, as a direct mail piece and as a leave behind when PwCEC executives from Barbados went calling. It was a piece lawyers and the like could pass on to their clients.

We told the story from the perspective of one entrepreneur who had chosen Barbados as his offshore haven. It gave the right touch of warmth and enabled potential customers to see themselves making a similar decision. We put all the “nuts and bolts” that the executives and their lawyers would need to know in smaller brochures that went in the back cover pocket. That way the lawyers and accountants could recommend what was appropriate for their clients.

Barbados’ tax rates and Bank Acts make it an attractive proposition; its strict compliance with Canadian and U.S. international banking regulations makes it look even better. Barbados is a sunny, tropical isle, but its inhabitants are well-educated and highly motivated. PriceWaterhouse is a big, internationally recognized firm, but PwCEC is small enough to treat clients with exceptional personal attention. In so many ways, PwCEC is "not too big, not too small... just right". Where had we heard that before?

In keeping with the friendly, chatty, personal tone of the brochure, we decided to use “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” as the theme. We commissioned watercolours showing parts of the tale to use throughout the brochure; the cover showed the Three Bears watching the sleeping young Goldilocks.
That creative decision proved "just right": every time PwCEC attended the same financial conference as its competitors, the bright Goldilocks piece shone like a beacon in the sea of others’ gray and blue corporate brochures. They attracted so much interest that the brochures had to be re-printed three times the first year!

When PriceWaterhouse was purchased and became PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Barbados office tried to keep Goldilocks. No luck. The next piece we created (under the new corporate design guidelines), still did things a little differently. People expect to see sun and sand on a brochure about a Caribbean firm. We chose instead to show satellite dishes, as a symbol of the island’s progress - but that’s a whole other story.