Mercer Advisors has a remarkable and highly desirable approach to investing: it brings investment strategies usually reserved for ultra-high-net-worth investors to a wider range of U.S. families. To make its case in a crowded marketplace, the national wealth manager engaged Thinkso to translate and distill its sophisticated, science-based process into a highly visual, step-by-step guide. The result is a book that’s as uncommon as Mercer Advisors’ approach — one that puts aside the typical financial jargon and thinly veiled sales pitch, makes the complex clear without sacrificing meaning or impact, and is just as eye-opening and useful for market veterans as it is for everyday investors.
BACKGROUND
The world’s capital markets are huge and complex. Investor needs are specific and nuanced. What’s in between is where Mercer Advisors’ value lies — and the story they asked Thinkso to help them tell in their inaugural Investing Handbook.
And what a big story it is: By definition, the subject matter is both complex and extremely important to all investors. Finding the right balance between accessibility and sophistication would be the key to successfully engaging an audience that varied greatly in financial knowledge and investing experience.
APPROACH
To create this balance, the Thinkso team started at the top with a page-by-page content strategy. In this framework, design and editorial work together to create a rich but easy-to-navigate information hierarchy. Casual readers can easily glean the big-picture benefits, while curious readers are invited to dig into the data and details.
While Mercer Advisors investing experts supplied most of the content for the book, Thinkso was tasked with editing and organizing it for a broad audience. With complex concepts to decipher and complicated processes to unpack, clarity was critical. Throughout, we used language that was free of jargon and unnecessary complexity. The tone is refreshingly conversational and down to earth (but never dumbed down).
The visual vocabulary is equally uncommon, clear, and engaging. The book’s striking infographic illustrations become an important part of the narrative, used to anchor key sections of the book, simplify complex concepts, and provide talk-through material for advisors to use one-on-one with clients. Many of these key illustrations were adopted for use in other Mercer Advisors marketing collateral.
RESULTS
While the handbook is designed to be eminently practical, it’s by no means boring. The accessible and highly visual storytelling is a revelation for readers accustomed to typical “financial land” brochureware. Most importantly, the book actually gets prospects and clients excited about what Mercer’s exceptional offering can do for them.
Feedback from the Mercer Advisors’ sales team, advisors, and the firm’s investment management partners has been uniformly positive — so much so that Mercer Advisors retained Thinkso to create a second, updated edition for 2025.
“One of our central promises to clients is institutional-grade investing delivered in a tailored portfolio. This is a powerful and novel idea, but also complex. Partnering with Thinkso, we were able to produce a book that simplifies and visualizes this sophisticated process. Most important, it gives clients and prospects a deeper understanding of the work we are doing on their behalf.” Daniel Gourvitch President, Mercer Advisors
A consistent page structure that employs the “Pyramid Principle” is key to making the book extremely accessible. For example, throughout headlines are written as intriguing topical labels to pull readers in, while the subheads capture the main takeaway of the spread. If the reader reads only these two elements—and nothing else—on each spread, they leave with a strong understanding of Mercer Advisors' value.
The book itself is also built like a messaging pyramid, with more accessible content up front and the deeper, science-based investing principles toward the back. Topics that would appeal to a more knowledgeable audience are referenced in the lighter sections toward the front and then expanded upon in a set of detailed (and delightfully wonky) appendices in the back.
Visuals that break the typical mold for financial information are employed not just to support the text, but also to add to the storytelling and convey important information on their own. We created a hybrid style—part engaging infographic, part data visualization.
The handbook’s role as go-to reference and step-by-step guide is enhanced with small details borrowed from textbooks and other reference books: cascading page numbers for sections, chapter summaries with page topics, an annotated table of contents, and detailed appendices.