Merrill Lynch


Structure for Organizing Information

"Simplifying Complex Communications to Highlight the Brand Message"

Merrill Lynch Global Philanthropy is involved with a tremendous number of beneficiary programs making it difficult to communicate its strategy and the scope of its giving. To overcome this, we created a simple, easy-to-communicate and easy-to-remember blueprint for organizing and communicating Global Philanthropy’s activities.

The Structure for Organizing Information divides all Global Philanthropy giving into the following categories:

Investing in Youth
	IPO — a groundbreaking national program to stimulate advances in youth education and development
	Signature Youth Programs — all other programs aimed at youth
Other Giving
	Higher Education
	The Arts
	Communities
	Health

The structure allows external audiences to understand readily the overall mission, with its focus on youth, and the role each other program plays in the mission. At the same time, it helps Global Philanthropy’s staff members construct communications about these complex activities.


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Annual Report

"Building Communications Pieces that Present the Brand Clearly and Excitingly"

We conceived, wrote and designed Global Philanthropy’s annual report. Our goal was to provide a highly accessible, easy-to-follow review of Merrill Lynch’s initiatives, positioning Merrill Lynch at the forefront of corporate philanthropic innovators. Information is delivered clearly because the book’s organization flows directly from the new Structure for Organizing Information — with an emphasis on Global Philanthropy’s focus on youth. The implicit message is “these people know what they are doing and can explain it.” The design supports the organizational structure and is bold, clean and current, underscoring the innovation message.

The emphasis on youth is made clear right from the front cover and is supported throughout by the use of brilliant colors and a lively, youthful feel. Part of this vibrancy is due to the use of the signature photographic device we created for this program.

Because Global Philanthropy relies on local organizations for photos, they are often low resolution and of poor quality. As this is an ongoing problem, we designed a signature photographic device as an integral design element of the new brand image. This signature device uses pictures small and in black and white. These are massed into horizontal or vertical arrangements by partially overlapping them with other photos or brilliant color tints. These signatures give the illusion of large scale images and a sense of color while causing viewers to overlook the quality of the photos themselves. The solution overcomes a major technical difficulty — the poor quality of available photos — while creating a powerful branding element.


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Website

"Communicating the Brand Consistently in All Media"

We developed external and internal websites that highlight Global Philanthropy’s strategy, provide basic information and are easily and efficiently updated by in-house staff. The site plan is based on the Structure for Organizing Information, so it provides information in exactly the same format as it appears in the annual report and in other places. While designed within tight corporate guidelines, the site is tied to the overall brand image by the use of brilliant colors and the signature photographic device, which changes to identify each of the five major sections on the site.

Beyond delivering the core information, the site was designed to be user-friendly, fun to use, creative, able to provide numerous interactive areas, and verbally and visually supportive of the brand message.

Because efficiency is key to making philanthropic dollars go further, we devised a plan that allows the external and internal sites to share identical pages — save for one section addressed specifically to Merrill Lynch employees. In this way, the time for site maintenance is nearly halved.


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