Question

Topic: Branding

Need Help W/ How To Start Determining Our Brand

Posted by Anonymous on 4/12/2011 at 1:01 PM ET 250 Points
I am the Marketing Manager of a small community bank. We have never really had a brand. I recently held a "branding" meeting with several members of our staff to try to figure out what our brand is. I went through a presentation explaining what a brand is and we had a good discussion on who we are. By the end, most people, including our President, determined that our brand is that we are strong, stable and have been around for over 100 years and have great customer service. This is not what our brand is but I didn't know how to explain that to them. As the new Marketing Manager I need to have a foundation to work from. I don't feel like I do right now and I need to find our true brand and start pushing it out.
I have been reading tons of articles on branding and I am very confused on how to begin this process. I need to know what types of questions to ask, if I should be doing customer and employee surveys, requesting small groups to meet to discuss, etc. Can someone point me in the right direction to begin this process? I do not want to hire an outside company to do this. Thanks for listening.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by ilan on 4/12/2011 at 1:36 PM Member
    Yours is a very typical question of many established businesses.
    The fact is that you DO have a brand, you just don't know how to define it, work with it, improve it, maintain it, and be in touch with it.
    No one "owns" a brand, it is in the mind of your consumers.
    When your CEO says things like "we are strong, stable and have been around for over 100 years and have great customer service" he only says it because that is what HE thinks.
    But your customers may think differently.
    You also have a thousand competitors who are " strong, stable and have been around for over 100 years and have great customer service"
    I wish I could come and give your staff a presentation about the whole issue.
    In such presentation I take the CEO and all the major stakeholders through a process, where they finally understand why they should start to feed the brand.
    A brand is a living thing, if you don't feed it, it will die.
    The one thing I'm almost sure about, do not try to do it if you are not an expert.
    You can do more damage by reading from a book and trying to implement "branding" in your company.
    There are two very important stages, internal branding and external branding.
    Until the internal branding process is not done, the external is like putting lipstick on a pig...
    No offense, but it is true.



  • Posted on 4/12/2011 at 3:07 PM Author
    Thank you to everyone for your quick response. For those of you that are telling me that being strong and stable is not a brand- I get it. That is what I wrote and thus the reason for posting.

    I know what a brand is- it's just getting there that is the difficult part. I will start with my customers and then work with non-customers to find out what they want and/or think.

    Any further advice would be welcome. Thanks again for your posts.
  • Posted by mgoodman on 4/12/2011 at 4:23 PM Moderator
    I'm with BARQ and ilan: You DO have a brand. It's whatever your customers think it is. What your management team has listed are a bunch of features that are important to them, but they have nothing to do with your brand image.

    I can appreciate that you want to do this without outside help, but I've seen that approach fail a lot more than I've seen it succeed. It's not because you don't understand branding, but because the management team will respect outside expertise a lot more -- especially if the outsider has very strong credentials. (It's also because this is a very specialized area of marketing, and it's hard to position yourself as both a generalist and a specialist.)

    If you want a good first step, find out what words and ideas your customers (and customers of other banks in the area) use to describe your bank and competitors. Create a kind of map that shows which banks are most frequently associated with which descriptors and attitudes, and look at it from the perspective of your customers and your competitors' customers. That will give you a starting point.
  • Posted by bkimbell on 4/13/2011 at 7:34 PM Accepted
    It sounds as if getting to the place where you are more in control of your brand message and conversation is the most important thing for you.

    My suggestion would be to do the following:

    1. Work with the leadership of the bank to determine the organizational core values, vision and mission (if you don't have them already). With this guidance you can see the core driving factors for the company, and therefore what you would ideally like the consumer-generated brand to be.

    2. Begin to grow the awareness of these elements with key stakeholders inside the company. This can be done all internally first - don't worry about the customers until everyone inside the company "gets it." All employees should operate and deliver on the core values, vision and mission every day.

    3. Quickly after all employees are operating on the same page, the external brand will start to show. At this time make sure your marketing materials, website, social media and all other external communications reflect the values of the bank.

    4. Make sure everything is consistent and all elements, internal and external, are telling the same story and illustrating the same core principles.

    5. Measure the effectiveness of these actions through polling and quick surveys that gather customer (and potential customer) beliefs on the bank brand.

    Hopefully this helps. I've worked with many organizations going through the same issue and it has worked when there is a high-level of commitment from the leadership.

    Good luck-
  • Posted on 5/24/2011 at 6:41 PM Member
    I see there is some good info here. I'd like to simplify 90% of this. Branding is overused, and usually used incorrectly. What you need is an identity (not a logo, as I'm sure you have one on your sign). Unless you have the resources and funds to saturate your regional area, branding is virtually impossible. If you'd like to give your bank a voice, even a personality, I believe this to be your goal. To do this, it comes down to two things; 1) who are your customers... their likes, dislikes, careers, etc. Demographics are huge. Second, what can you say to them, that will make them like you. It's a democratic business. It's like someone you really like, ask you, Who are you? And your response, Who do you want me to be?

    A door to door salesman to be successful needs two things; to have a likeable personality, and to have something diff about their product, that the customer wants. It's that simple.

    My suggestion: start with an in-store campaign. For your customers you have now to see, and to help the employees buy into it. Next? Forget about mass media buys. Get your banks name associated with everything good about your community. Sponsors, employee involvement, anything.

    I think a guerilla approach will return in spades. Remember, it's about finding yourself in the customers eyes. It's your voice, your face, and your actions.

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