Meaningful Marketing Moments. Why Doing Less Delivers More.
Human connection, brand experience and the role of AI in modern marketing, with Elly Sherwin, CMO at Fundment.
Most marketing plans right now are responding to noise by making more noise.
More content, more channels, more output. And it’s not landing the way it used to, especially in financial services, where trust is everything and attention is harder to earn than ever.
Audiences are overwhelmed. And the brands making the biggest impression aren’t necessarily the ones doing the most, they’re the ones making smarter, more deliberate decisions about where, when and how they show up and why.
Elly Sherwin knows this territory well. As CMO at Fundment, and a marketer with twenty years of leadership across HSBC Innovation Banking, and Silicon Valley Bank, 3i Group and agency side, she’s building a financial services challenger brand in one of the UK’s highest-trust sectors, where credibility, customer experience and the best technology aren’t nice–to–haves, they’re the rock solid foundations.
“I’d rather do three things brilliantly than ten things adequately. The ROI on brilliant is way higher.”
Elly Sherwin, CMO at Fundment
Financial services marketing that cuts through
Andy Weir, Ride Shotgun’s Chief Client Officer and Elly Sherwin sat down together to talk about the pressure to do more and why it’s often the wrong response, where AI genuinely earns its place in a financial services marketing strategy, and what it actually takes to create a brand moment that does more than fill a room for a day.
In this episode, Elly and Andy cover:
- ROI on brilliant: Why doing fewer things brilliantly beats spreading budget thin, and why the ROI on brilliant is always higher.
- Inauthenticity: The danger of inauthenticity in financial services marketing and why trust is built through behaviour, not messaging.
- AI vs human connection: Where AI genuinely earns its place, and where human connection still can’t be replaced.
Event Marketing in Financial Services: The Adviser Edge
Fundment’s flagship event, Fundment LIVE: The Adviser Edge, is a good example of what meaningful financial services marketing actually looks like in practice.
Most events start with outputs. What content do we want? What speakers can we get? What does the day look like? Fundment did it the other way round, starting with outcomes. What do we want people to think, feel, say and do, not just on the day, but in the months and years after?
Ride Shotgun partnered with Fundment to build the complete event identity around one creative platform: ‘Think deeper. Move faster.’ This shaped the narrative, visual identity and every touchpoint across digital, print and the physical space. Hosted at London’s Outernet, it included a wraparound LED entrance tunnel, a stage built for sharper thinking, with every detail considered.
To extend the energy beyond the room, we captured the day across photography, motion and live vox pops, turning it around into an event reel within 24 hours and giving Fundment content to keep the momentum going long after the event ended.
The event brought 400 financial planning professionals into the room, with Professor Brian Cox, Daniel Priestley and Rachel Botsman on stage.
That’s what a meaningful marketing moment actually looks like.
→ Explore the full Fundment LIVE: The Adviser Edge case study.
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The Ride Shotgun podcast is a series of honest conversations with the people shaping modern marketing. Past guests include Helen Jeremiah, former CMO of Boots, and Lee Morton, Head of Brand and Proposition Development at Arco and Marianne Shillingford, Creative Director at Dulux. CMOs, brand strategists, creative directors and the voices behind decisions that actually move brands forward.
No fluff, no hot takes. Just the pin-sharp thinking behind the work.
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