Another fascinating book project has come to completion. 4,000 commemorative anniversary books have been delivered to Economical Insurance to mark the company’s 150th corporate anniversary milestone. Authored by Dr. Ulrich Frisse and designed by Lesley Warren and her team at Lesley Warren Design Group, Economical® 150—Still Making History traces the story of Economical Insurance, a member of Definity Financial Corporation, from its founding in 1871 in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario to its current standing as a leading, national, P&C company in Canada.
Working with the Economical team has been a fantastic experience. Eight months of archival research in the extensive company archives, combined with interviews with over 60 client stakeholders, including past and current board members, executive team members, broker partners, employees at head office and in the various branch and service offices, provided the source base for this milestone publication.
During the research stage, we conducted multiple photo shoots to produce the imagery for the book and the design team adopted Economical’s 150th anniversary brand guidelines to ensure that the design of the book was visually aligned with the look of other company communications throughout the 150th anniversary year. The outcome is a contextually rich, fully branded publication that tells the fascinating story of Economical through an inspiring narrative and a branded design, supported by hundreds of images.
“Dr. Ulrich Frisse, worked for months at our head office, mostly alone in the silence of a pandemic-era office building, studying and photographing stacks of materials. With his academic’s eye, he saw not only papers inscribed with scrolled lettering and endless numerical entries, but fascinating societal themes and stories behind them. Along the way, Dr. Frisse shared some of these discoveries with our staff in lively seminars. He also interviewed more than four dozen employees to learn about day-to-day office life from the 1960s to now. Now, it is our absolute privilege to be able to share Dr. Frisse’s work with our employees past and present, our broker partners, our valued customers, and all of those who would like to understand a little more about the history of our company (and really, of Canada itself).”
Rowan Saunders, President and CEO, Definity Financial Corporation
Thank you to the many Economical team members involved in the creation of this beautiful book. It’s been a real privilege collaborating with you to help you achieve your goals for your exceptional milestone anniversary.
About Historical Branding Solutions
As North America’s leading corporate history agency and company history book publisher, Historical Branding Solutions Inc. is the provider of choice for the most distinguished family businesses, corporations and not-for-profit organizations when looking for a team of content creation and design professionals to create the finest corporate history books, company history books, business anniversary books, franchisee story books, foundations and start-up story books and entrepreneurial legacy books for legacy preservation, milestone anniversary celebration, and customer, employee, franchisee and community engagement. The HBS team serves clients across Canada and the United States.
