Know-How Exchange : Branding

Beware the branding iron.

1. If you are doing well as a small bank, with sustained profits for four years, why do you need to be "rebranded?"

2. A branding agency that tells you have poor brand recognition is not credible. That information should come from someone who does not have a vested interest in the results of that study.

3. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

4. You must first establish what it is you expect a branding campaign to do . . . and that must be expressed in terms of increased depositors, product sales . . . in other words, profits. Recognition for the sake of recognition is meaningless.

Spend your money elsewhere . . . incentives to attract new customers, methods for generating cross sell, improved customer service, community relations.

Hi,

Deliverable: Rebrand a bank's image

Narrow thinking: Only change of logo

About Bank: local bank with 15 branches; performing very well in terms of profits for the past 4 years

Issues: bank's brand perception is quite low

I think here you need to do some market research and do Reverse Marketing. Look out what customers are looking from a bank and see do you have the means to deliver that. There is no need to go for branding agency. We profs at marketingprofs.com are there to help you out. One solution is to get inputs from customers directly to change your value proposition as a part of rebranding.

Just go through the following points:

1. Word of Mouth: In service industry and especially banks which are based on trust, word of mouth matters a lot.

2. Service: The different touch points with different customers should give a feeling of instant service to customers. Also make sure that the variability in service in minimal - i mean different employees serving differently

3. Competitive Offering: Its always best to understand your customer offerings and then revert back with even betters offerings for customers. This will help to identify need gap better customer expectation and your offerings

4. POP/ POD: This is a marketing jargon. You have to see the point of difference of your customers and make it your point of parity. With that create your new differentials i.e. USP i.e. New POD. This will help you to come up with new value proposition for customers.

5. No Advertisement: As your bank is a local one, you need not go for commercials as such. You can go for below the line activities - like Radios, pamplets in locality etc.

6. Magazines: Definately look for local magazines - like we have Marketing Avenues every Sunday where everybody in Delhi advertise.

Did you see any change in the logo in above points. Definately if u feel like u can incorporate that as well. First things first.

Hope this will help.

Nader,

Your question is simple, but the answer is complicated. Branding is one step in strategic direction setting. The actions described above are marketing activities - of which you have a multitude of choices depending on the situation. If your bank has a low brand recognition, it could be that your brand strategy is not consistent and your marketing activities don't work to drive that home because of that inconsistency. And perhaps your brand strategy does not fit well with your overall marketing strategy. Or, more likely, you have no brand strategy or marketing strategy. Chances are you have marketed the bank - promoted it, tried to sell people on it. What you need to do is Marketing. Where you want to start - asking questions - that's the right place to start.

Marketing involves three steps: Strategy, Planning, and Execution.

Strategy
Marketing strategy is in two parts, Analysis and Directions Setting

Analysis
Analysis involves information gathering about the customers, the competition, and your company. For the customer, you identify needs of the customer and segment groups of customers by needs, influencers for each segment - words and images that affect the customer emotionally, and what media the customer uses to find out about your kind of service - banking - by segment. Nitin (Nitin Kochhar) gave a good list of potentials for this. But, since "advertising" will cost money, you need to find out specifically where the segments you are targeting find out about your kind of bank.

For the competitive analysis, you identify the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors, how well they match the needs of the customers by segment, and where they miss those needs.

For your bank, you need to do a SWOT analysis. This will help you understand your core competencies and also areas where you need to improve.

Direction Setting
For this phase, you will use your competitive analysis and SWOT, coupled with your customer analysis to develop strategic actions, product/service definition, position statement, and brand strategy.

All of these steps have to be completed so that you have a firm, cohesive strategy - a roadmap of where you want to do and why - and then you can define the set of marketing activities to market your bank. This is the Marketing Plan step. And then, with the right kinds of goals and metrics set and a routine monitoring step to see how effective your marketing activities are, you can Execute.

If you would like to see more questions you ask during the Marketing process, I have a very detailed outline of the process on my website - including a paragraph on branding itself. Click on my name above and it takes you to my profile. A link to my website is in the profile.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Wayde hit the nail on the head. You need an overall marketing strategy that INCLUDES the branding strategy. If you start with the branding strategy, it's like designing the hood ornament before you have the car. In the ideal world, you'd design/develop the whole thing at the same time, so that it all fits together just right, and delivers a total brand experience that's consistent with what you intend.

Because you are an existing bank -- a successful one at that -- this is somewhat more difficult than if you were a brand new firm. You need to start with a SWOT analysis. Then you may want to conduct some primary research (if you haven't already) that will let you map the attributes your customers value most, and how you and your competition stack up against those attributes. See if you can find some unmet needs that are available for you to "own." (This is called a "Brand Audit" study.)

All of this is pretty basic for experienced marketers. You might want to "Hire an Expert" by clicking on "Post a Project" in the column at the right. Your current agency doesn't sound like the right place to start; they have an axe to grind.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Just to back everyone else up really and agree that you do not need to rebrand, but to reinforce your brand values in the eyes of your market.

Good Luck

Without knowing anything else, besides the info you posted, my short answer to your question, about whether 'to brand or not' is that most rebranding efforts are not necessary, even disruptive, especially if your sales are already good.

When I hear that a competitor is rebranding, I am happy because it typically signals instability, perhaps even dissension more than opportunity and vigor.

That said, you actually have two issues immediately in front of you:

1) Trust the branding agency who have a vested stake in the $500,000 rebranding effort, or

2) Convince your boss and decision makers of your value as a marketing/research department.

The brand/rebrand is a minor issue unless you get these two questions worked out. If you don't work these out, the same issues will come back and bite you again.

For problem #1, there appears to be a major conflict of interest in the branding research agency telling your growing business that you need to rebrand and they can do it for you for half a million $. This smells VERY bad. I would be reluctant to trust these guys at all in the future.

For problem #2, conducting your own research is great to for the info you need, and proving your worth to your own bank. I'd even consider additional research from a different research company. Don't tell them anything about the fishy research that was already conducted. You want fresh perspective and answers. Also, make sure they do not have a stake in rebranding efforts. They need to be a research company, and not a full service ad/marketing agency.

Last advice is consider cutting back on your budget to your current ad agency; and shift a portion to a new agency for select markets. That way, you get the best of all worlds... It's the current state of affairs these days, retaining multiple agencies.

- Total ad budget stays the same (the money is allocated differently).
- You get fresh ideas from new agency.
- Two agencies keep each other accountable to high quality work.
- Give the new agency several markets and test to see if there is a difference in sales. The market that has higher sales from previous period is the agency that should get more of your budget.

The downside of multi agency is the added complexity and work. But it is worth it.

I concur with Michael with respect to the "Hire an Expert" link on here. One way to help convince your boss how best to help the bank is to have the experts here provide you with proposals on what we'd do for your situation. It doesn't cost you anything to post a project and maybe some of the experts will provide you with the results you are looking for at considerable savings from the $500,000 your boss is ready to spend on rebranding. Use the link in the upper right "Post a Project" or clock on this link.

https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/pfh_addco.asp

Wayde

First of all, I quite agree with you that you should survey first to find out what people think of the bank before you start rebranding.Othwerwise, what will you rebrand? What you ask will be very crucial in determining what needs to be done. In other words, you need to ask some tough questions.

In terms of what you should ask if you decide to go the route of rebranding, my understanding of the banks is that they have at least two categories of customers

1) Consumer Accounts—Banks draw them in so that they do tons of deposits and thus lot of cash flow that they can use to invest and draw customers for commercial loans.

2) Commercial Accounts-Here you are trying to get them to open accounts so that they get used to doing business with your bank and they then open lines of credit and loan accounts.

If your bank offers credit cards and other services, then there is more to consider.

Branding in a product situation is much different and easier than in a service situation where branding depends on how the personnel deal with the customers in addition to the standard hours open and products offered.Retail generally has lot of turnover and that makes consistent branding little bit harder.

Having said all that, now you need to find out from both the Consumer and Commercial accounts their perceptions of the bank. You may also study the competition and you may already know it to some extent. In addition to the standard marketing research questions to ask, I would definitely ask people something like “If you could easily switch your account to another bank, whom would you switch to and why”? I would also ask them to rate your competition in addition to yours on a scale as that would give more information about competition. Having a through and detailed marketing research will be a great tool.

In terms of rebranding, you just have to look at each of the 4Ps and that should be the basis of marketing research questions.

Does your bank offer the right/enough product selection? Ask them to rate on a scale and than ask them to rate your competitors’ banks on those attributes and that should give you answers for rebranding.

Does your bank offer the right price and in this case it may be the fees you charge and interest rates you offer?

I will say again that Service is a big part of banks as it a service industry and I would devote almost 50% of the questions to service related issues as once people start getting irritated over service issues, they tend to think less and less of the bank regardless of the free goodies you can offer them.

If you decide to use a different marketing research company, it would be good to compare branding agency’s results with the new marketing research co. However I feel that if you decide to spilt the work, you are opening the door to fighting between branding agency and marketing research co. if rebranding doesn’t work as branding agency can easily blame things on faulty research.

It may turn out that you don’t need branding agency if your mktg. research co. finds lack of service, not highly trained tellers and high turnover at teller line/banking personnel line. Or it may turn out that you need more marketing people to do day to day marketing.

Hence the questions to ask before you attempt to rebrand are almost the same when you brand and the steps I see are
1) Thorough marketing research to learn target market’s perception of your bank and that would include
a) Products/services
b) Locations and that would include ease of getting to the bank, the parking availability/ATM network
c) Competitive rates for loans and CDs
d) Promotions—how often do you offer special promotions to induce people to do more CDs and home equity lines of credit.
e) How do you let people know of your bank/ and its special promotions. Do you advertise in the major local papers or do you just put a sign at the bank hoping people notice it.

Armed with that information, then and only then you can decide if you should rebrand or what should you do.