Avenue Living Asset Management has a new look, and we couldn’t be more excited.
The rebrand, which launched in late 2020, is designed to showcase how much we’ve grown since our founding, and to reflect Avenue Living’s true personality.
“We wanted to show the world we’re a leader,” said Jason Miller, Avenue Living’s Creative Director. “We act like leaders in everything we do, and our brand should reflect that.”
Our AUM grew by $450 million in 2020 thanks to strategic decision-making that withstood the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Historically, the Prairies have been our key area of focus. More recently, we have entered new markets with the creation of the U.S. Real Estate Trust and Mini Mall Storage Properties Trust,” said Jason Jogia, Chief Investment Officer. Avenue Living broadened its reach south of the border in 2020 with investments in Colorado and Kansas while simultaneously expanding east to Ontario and continuing to invest in western Canada.
The new brand is designed to connect with our current and potential stakeholders in the private equity realm – investors, lenders, employees, and the general public — in various ways across multiple channels.
Representing a Personality
The design uses visual elements such as colour, type, and imagery to connect with an audience and communicate the fundamental Avenue Living personality. The result is a mix of sophistication, accessibility and even playfulness. “We wanted to reflect the maturity of where we are as a company, and to reflect that professionalism and trustworthiness,” said Miller, “but we also wanted to make sure we were accessible and human. We started with the idea of daring to be different.”
While Avenue Living Asset Management is focused on investment and how we can achieve the best value for stakeholders, at our core, we’re really about people. By investing in “the everyday” — class B and C multifamily residential assets that largely serve essential workers in our communities — and by following a philosophy that reinforces a commitment to be stewards of capital, people are at the centre of everything we do.
“At the end of the day, everyone realizes we’re talking about individuals,” said Miller. “Circles, networks, families, all of those things. And the brand articulates that through copy and visuals.”
A New Way of Thinking
At its core, the brand strategy relies on a concept called “design thinking,” a way of looking at the world that begins with empathy and connection, and the knowledge that whatever strategy you create will change over time. Design thinking aims to create an experience for an audience, engaging them along the way and changing with their feedback. It keeps humans at the centre of the strategy, focusing on the quality of their experience.
The model is a shift from the traditional ways of building strategy around competitive advantage to asking how organizations can engage with their audience in more relevant ways, using real-time data and multiple platforms to create a holistic experience that serves the customer’s needs.
Design thinking is catching on in business schools, enterprise-level corporations like IBM, and the McKinsey Global Institute, the last two of which offer training in the approach and assert that organizations who develop their entire culture around that way of thinking can achieve both measurable results and a competitive advantage.
The approach mirrors the Avenue Living core values, which emphasize our duty of care to our stakeholders and it embodies the idea that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our investors, employees, and partners. And while those things remain as the we grow and change, our branding has been designed in a way that allows it to change along with us.
“We purposely designed the brand to be flexible, so it can change over time,” said Miller. “This is just the beginning.”
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