Creating Brand Value in Financial Services

In an increasingly globalised market – where even how a business defines their competition may change day-to-day thanks to technology disruption and evolving business models – companies are more and more aware of the value of “Brand”, and its contribution to enterprise value.
However, it appears there is still significant discrepancy between sectors in their approach to balancing long term “brand-building” support with more short-term sales activation, which may be undermining both the effectiveness and the value of brands. In their recent analysis of findings from the IPA Databank for example, Les Binet and Peter Field discovered that this was especially true within Financial Services, where the impact of this imbalance led the authors to comment that “the sector has embraced value destruction to a degree that no others have”. A sobering thought for industry brand managers!
So how can we address this? Well, one of the key factors in building a brand over the long term is brand consistency. Whilst this may be recognised by most marketers, it can sometimes be hard to translate this into tangible results; meaning the requirement can be overlooked in the midst of the more “urgent” marketing activity required to drive sales. There is a great deal of research however which shows that far from just being a “nice to have”, brand consistency can significantly contribute to the efficiency and impact of all other marketing spend. What’s more, implementing a brand management approach to ensuring consistency can actually help to reduce other marketing costs, thereby doubling the ROI benefit. And who doesn’t want that?
For all you Financial Services marketers out there responsible for the management of these crucial business assets, we thought it would be helpful to round-up the highlights of this research – including some of our own thoughts – to explore five key ways that brand consistency can drive brand success, and why. Finally, we’ll also consider what to look out for when implementing a brand management process in order to ensure that consistency is delivered effectively.
You can view the full Brandworkz white paper “5 ways in 1 to create brand value in Financial Services” by clicking the download button.