strategic brand stewardship
Ventia is a leading essential infrastructure services provider that makes infrastructure work for communities across Australia and New Zealand. The company is an Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) top 200 company, with a secondary listing on New Zealand’s Exchange (NZX) and a workforce of more than 35,000 people.
my role
As senior advisor for brand and marketing at Australian billion-dollar listed company, Ventia, I have been deeply involved in driving and executing brand strategy to anchor a cohesive storytelling across the business - from the greater vision to the individual assets and employee engagement.
Ventia | 2021-2025
/ all work
in this section:
integrated brand portal
digital storytelling across platforms
the challenge
Entering the list as an ASX200-company, the annual reporting required close alignment with the visual brand expression.
the solution
I provided a visual style guide and advised the Investor Reporting team in their engagement with an external design agency around image selection and visual storytelling, ensuring the brand values and priorities were well represented through imagery. I also co-organised photo shoots of selected projects and sites across Australia and New Zealand.
highlights
investor reporting
As Ventia was listed on the Australian and New Zeland Stock Exchange, the importance of adequately representing the company grew, also from a brand perspective.
I worked closely with the Investor Reporting team to liaise with the external graphic design agency who created our reporting suite. My background in artistic training such as photography, image composition and graphic design - as well as drawing comic books - helped ensure the advice was high level and no details were missed. I selected a pool of photographs from the company image library for each report, making sure all the 'boxes were ticked' as far as representing the diversity of the people, the projects, the sectors, field workers and office workers. At the beginning of the work, I helped create a specific visual style guide to support the agency in staying aligned to the brand guidelines.
the impact
The reporting now aligned with the brand guidelines and the careful image selection underpinned the overall brand storytelling, earning me a personal acknowledgment from the CEO in 2024.
creative direction
end-to-end support
Speaking "fluent visual", I worked closely with the Investor Relations team and engaged stakeholders across the business to help select the right imagery for their particular sections, whilst keeping the vision of the overall look and feel of the reporting suite.
For quick fixes, I photoshopped photos for minor details, always keeping with the tight time-line of a project with so many moving parts.
Before the reporting season began, I worked with the team to organise annual photo shoots of select sites and projects that were important to portray in the upcoming report. I worked with trusted producers to ensure the best photographers and diverse representation on-site by our employees and equipment, and I
provided creative direction and photography guidance of the types of shots we were looking to get. This ensured the brand was always represented, and a wide range of formats were captured for both details, portraits, field work photos, horizontal imagery for spreads and striking portrait formats for cover photos.
and end-to-end support
creative direction
creative direction and end-to-end support with telling the brand story
Selecting the photography for the investor reporting suite was integral for the brand visual storytelling. With people at the heart of the company's success, the representation of genuine, grounded, actual employees was important to convey in all photography to cultivate trust in "what we say is what we do".
what I did:
For each image option, I made sure I had mapped out the location, project, sector and employee, so the full reporting always had adequate representation of the company's full scope of work, people and values.
visual and design guidance
to ensure reporting was on-brand
personal acknowledgment
from the company CEO in 2024.
photography oversight
of existing imagery and new photoshoots
"Ashika, thank you for the exceptional work you did with the imagery and design in this year’s annual and sustainability report.
The team was extremely appreciative of your efforts and the end result is something to be very proud of.
Keep it up, Dean"
- CEO Dean Banks, March 2024
I proposed a selection of photography for each section in the reporting and also worked alternative image suggestions into the layout to provide examples of other options, ensuring the Investor Relations team was always well informed.
Get in touch
Blending structure with imagination, and clarity with heart.
