FINANCIAL SERVICES: ESG & REGULATION
Holtara: Launching Apex Group’s Global ESG Service
About
Apex Group is a single-source financial solutions provider dedicated to driving positive change while supporting the growth and ambitions of asset managers, allocators, financial institutions, and family offices around the world. The firm has continually disrupted the industry through its investment in innovation and talent, now employing over 13,000 professionals across global regions.
The Brief
In-line with its commitment to responsible global citizenship and in recognition of the growing importance and global complexity of ESG regulation, Apex Group developed a unique, data driven offering to help its client base achieve compliance: Holtara.
Our job as Apex Group’s dedicated PR partner was to work with the Managing Director of this new, separately branded organisation, as well as the wider Apex leadership team, to develop a launch strategy for this new service.
Key priorities:
Ensure the perception of the new service being ‘arms length’ from the wider business;
Effectively communicate the data and tech capability of the business;
Position key members of the team as thought leaders;
Help navigate contentious issues around ‘green washing’ and a febrile political atmosphere that had grown up around ESG regulations.
Our Work
To delivery on our key priorities, we spent time interviewing the team and helping clearly articulate this new enterprise’s USP in what was an increasingly crowded market. From this research, we developed a set of reactive communications and standardised messaging to help manage the contentious and difficult questions that might arise - especially given the wider Apex Group’s exposure to certain energy industries that don’t sit well with ESG rhetoric. For our proactive PR campaign, we developed a launch communications plan that saw us land headlines in key ESG and business sustainability publications, as well as thought leadership opportunities for the team in high priority publications, such as Investment Week.
Results
The launch secured prominent coverage across key ESG and sustainability trade publications, including ESG Today and Asset Servicing Times, successfully introducing the new venture to its target audience and establishing early credibility within the market.
This initial visibility created a strong platform for ongoing thought leadership activity. We went on to secure coverage and commentary opportunities in key titles such as Investment Week, positioning senior spokespeople as credible voices on key ESG and regulatory issues.
The result was a communications programme that not only supported a successful launch, but also established long-term authority in a complex and highly scrutinised sector.
“I had the pleasure of working with Rosely Group who are consummate professionals and demonstrated a valuable ability to provide the flexibility needed to keep up with the fast evolving communications requirements of hyper growth financial services business.
Their ability to grasp extremely complex topics was particularly impressive, consistently delivering extremely engaging, high quality and topical thought leadership content, often under significant time pressure.
Acting as an extension of the internal comms team, Rosely Group offered fresh, creative thinking and strategies that helped us to make the most of our engagement with media.”