Ask a bank CEO to choose between budgeting $450,000 for brand building and hiring three or four lenders, and he or she will always give the latter the green light. It’s because most bankers typically believe that their success is built exclusively on personal contact—there’s no way the formula for success can be driven by anything other than one-onone, eye-to-eye relationship building.
As a result, when it comes to effective branding, the banking industry has been among the worst to achieve it. There are many who believe that bank branding just isn’t practical because, for the most part, banks are virtually identical, providing a similar range of products and services at equivalent prices in environments that are more or less the same. Yet that is exactly the environment in which strong brands have historically prevailed (think Intel or Southwest Airlines).
the essence of a brand
“Ultimately, a brand is the things people say about you when you’re not there,” says Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com.
With so much brand jargon being thrown around these days, it is hard to understand what a brand really means to a business. It’s often associated with slogans, advertising campaigns, logos and organizational names. But as Bezos points out, a brand is much more emotional in nature because it is tied to ideas of reputation, trust and the quality of an institution.
We follow the view that a brand is what a person feels after repeated interactions with any aspect of a product or service. Since the brand is so connected to what the marketplace believes and feels, it represents a promise to consumers to deliver a set of experiences. Over time, delivering on this promise leads to customers having an
emotional preference for the brand.
So how can banks and other institutions in competitive environments create brands that inspire emotional connections and loyalty? The fi rst, and most critical step, is gaining a thorough understanding of how your bank’s brand fi ts in the marketplace. The following is an exercise that can help you identify this.
