Purpose-led rebrand drives hiring and alignment at OMERS
Led a purpose-driven rebrand that increased high-quality job applicants by 20%, improved asset delivery speed by 30%, and unified design efforts across divisions.
2023-2024
OMERS' Pension Plan
OMERS is a Canadian institutional investor that provides pensions to municipal employees and manages over $100B in assets.
Brand Design Strategy
Cross-Team Alignment
Talent Attraction
Outcome
Transformed OMERS’ brand into a purpose-led, scalable system that improved efficiency by 30%, strengthened employer brand perception, and unified teams across all divisions.
Why It Mattered
OMERS’ fragmented brand and inconsistent tools limited communication and slowed collaboration. The new system connected purpose, people, and process, helping teams work faster and tell a clearer, more authentic story.
Results
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20% increase in high-quality job applicants across divisions
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30% faster asset delivery through reusable templates and design tools
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Unified campaigns across internal and external channels
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Improved employer brand perception and adoption across all teams
OMERS UNiTE Town Hall 2024 unveiling of corporate brand evolution
Overview
OMERS is one of Canada’s largest institutional investors, managing over $100B in assets and providing pensions for municipal employees.
The organization’s mission was strong and its impact undeniable, but its brand had fallen behind. Internally, teams struggled with inconsistent tools and fragmented messaging. Externally, OMERS was not connecting with modern talent or clearly expressing its purpose.
This rebrand was more than a visual refresh. It was a purpose-driven transformation that aligned culture, communication, and experience. The result was a unified brand system that improved clarity, efficiency, and connection across the organization.
Challenge
Despite meaningful work and a clear mission, OMERS’ brand no longer reflected who it had become. Design inconsistencies, slow asset delivery, and disconnected collaboration made it difficult to communicate effectively or attract top talent.
The challenge was to rebuild the brand from the inside out, aligning internal culture with external expression. We needed a system that could scale across divisions, communicate purpose clearly, and inspire employees as much as it engaged audiences.
OMERS 2023 Climate Action Plan
My Role
As Associate Director, Content and Design, I led an internal team of five designers and partnered with two corporate communications leaders to define and deliver the rebrand. I reported to senior leadership across Corporate Communications and worked closely with Directors, Senior Directors, and VPs to align design direction with strategic business objectives.
I also established a Design Centre of Excellence that unified designers from across all OMERS divisions, bringing together approximately fifteen professionals spanning UX, Corporate, HR, Information, and Member-focused design teams. This group became a collaborative network for consistency, shared learning, and quality across all brand touchpoints.
My focus was on clarity, inclusion, and adoption. I worked to ensure that every team understood the new system and could use it confidently to communicate OMERS’ purpose and story.
Strategy & Approach
The rebrand began with listening. We conducted interviews and employee surveys to uncover gaps between how OMERS saw itself and how it was perceived both internally and externally.
From these insights, we built a strategy around three guiding principles:
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Lead with purpose. Root every design and message in the organization’s mission.
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Design for alignment. Build tools that connect teams rather than just deliver assets.
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Empower creativity through systems. Give teams structure and flexibility to create confidently within the brand.
Visually, we introduced a vibrant, human-centered design language with bolder colors, modern typography, and accessible layouts. We built a cross-channel design system and reusable templates that simplified production and ensured consistency and speed across divisions.
Because there was initial hesitation around a complete redesign, I introduced visual changes incrementally. We started with an updated color palette, then slowly layered in design tokens, font choices, and grid refinements. This gradual rollout made adoption feel natural and built trust with stakeholders who had initially resisted large-scale change.
Many early creative discussions began with ambiguous feedback, such as “make it more vibrant.” By asking the right questions, I was able to translate vague opinions into actionable design direction. That clarity helped our teams move faster and make decisions with confidence.
Tony is a skilled storyteller and brand strategist who helped OMERS connect with internal and external audiences, inspiring employees and advancing its employer brand.
Chor Lam, Corporate Responsibility & Engagement Leader, OMERS
Results & Impact
The rebrand delivered measurable improvements in both performance and perception:
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20% increase in high-quality job applicants across divisions
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30% faster asset delivery through reusable templates and tools
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Unified campaigns across internal and external channels
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Improved employer brand perception and modernized reputation
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Cross-divisional adoption of the design system and brand toolkit
These outcomes demonstrated that purposeful design can strengthen both culture and business performance.
Showcasing OMERS' employee wellness program through stories from employees
Leadership & Influence
My leadership approach centered on inclusion and alignment. By bringing HR, DEI, IT, and Communications teams into the creative process early, we built shared ownership instead of top-down enforcement.
To measure the rebrand’s impact, I worked with stakeholders to define success metrics that reflected both business and cultural goals. We tracked quantitative KPIs such as candidate application quality scores, marketing collateral performance, and social engagement. We also included qualitative data from surveys and feedback sessions to capture employee sentiment. The resulting cross-functional dashboard became our shared reference point for progress and learning.
I developed onboarding materials and training sessions to help teams understand the reasoning behind new brand decisions. This strengthened brand literacy and built internal advocacy.
Through storytelling workshops and internal brand showcases, I helped employees connect their daily work to the organization’s mission. This shifted engagement from compliance to pride.
Ultimately, this rebrand transformed OMERS’ design practice into a cultural connector that reinforced purpose through every experience.
Attracting OMERS' employee prospects with advancement opportunities
Learnings
Strategic design isn’t about decoration, it’s about translation. This rebrand taught me how to listen beyond preferences and uncover the core tension a brand is trying to resolve. By aligning internal culture with external expression, we created a system that resonated deeply and performed reliably.
“Good brand strategy doesn’t just clarify who you are... it makes others feel it too.”