How Panmure Liberum is bringing the best of the old and new to investment banking

Investment bank Panmure Liberum is distilling and externalising its brand promise after a major merger, says its Head of Marketing and Communications.

The merger between Panmure Gordon and Liberum was announced in January and completed in May, bringing together two significant names from the industry, and creating the largest independent investment bank in the UK by number of clients, Elizabeth Netti (pictured) explains. The deal combined two highly complementary businesses with very similar cultures, and minimal overlap across corporate clients and sector expertise. Nonetheless, she notes that a merger is always a busy and challenging time for marketers.

There were many operational aspects to the merger, including significant projects such as assessing where marketing interacted with different parts of the business and ensuring consistency and efficiency.

The goal was of course to combine the best of both companies. Liberum had a significant social media profile, for example, and Panmure Gordon’s focus on internal communications and HR-led initiatives such as their Internship programme was a strong positive.

The bigger job was to determine the brand of the combined entity. While there was much that was complementary about the two firms and their culture, Elizabeth also believes that there were facets of the business that contrasted, with a “nice creative tension” between Panmure Gordon’s 150-year heritage and the 17-year-old Liberum.

Elizabeth notes that heritage is still valued in the industry.

“It gives you that sense of solidity, longevity and scale – all those things that are really important in any kind of professional partner, but especially an investment bank.”

The Liberum side had a particular strength in working with founders, as Liberum still had founder Shane Provost as an active member of its board and of its business.

“I think having that founder-led mentality has definitely helped attract a new generation of businesses, because founders feel that we understand their challenges more than, perhaps, one of the larger investment banks.”

This creative tension factored into how the two brands were combined, with Panmure Gordon playing to their strong heritage with classic blue, and Liberum having recently gone through a rebrand, using a racing green colour and a diagonal slash as a motif.

“We felt that racing green was quite differentiated in the sector; it still has that heritage feel, but it’s also quite unusual.”

There was broad agreement on moving forward with racing green. However, Elizabeth notes that due consideration was taken to determine whether this was the right thing to do, as well as work with a design agency to look at the visual identity and create some new concepts based off this idea of a tension between heritage and modernity.

“They came up with some great ideas, but ultimately we liked the colour and the equity we built up over the last nine months,” she says.

With the logo updated to reflect the new name, the decision meant that a lot of the previous collateral could be kept and there was less work to rebrand everything, with the website simply updated.

“Visually, it was great that everyone just really liked where we’d got to with the Liberum branding – it made the process a bit simpler than it could have been and it meant we didn’t lose out the equity that we built.”

Going forward, she likens the marketing strategy and model at the investment bank to that of a professional services firm or even a marketing agency. Marketing’s job is to help the bankers, analysts and traders sell their services to people who are probably already aware of the firm, even if they don’t necessarily know much about how or why the firm is different from its peers, or why they should put them on a consideration list.

“There’s definitely a brand strategy there about how do we get our message across, how do we establish to that audience who we are and demonstrate our expertise?”

This comprises a mix of brand awareness and showcasing knowledge through whatever channels might be most relevant. Elizabeth says the two cornerstones of the strategy are PR and social.

The focus on comms aims to drive overarching awareness and understanding of the Panmure Liberum brand.  One of the main goals is being featured in top tier media publications. This included extensive comms around the launch to establish the new combined firm’s key messages; who the firm is and what it does. The next stage is extending this.

“We tend to be featured in investment sections of top tier titles anyway, because we have our research analysts commenting on various market movements and corporate moves, as well as obviously the research that they publish. So we get lots of mentions there, but we also aim to showcase the expertise of the rest of the firm, and what Panmure Liberum is all about.”

The second major channel is LinkedIn, where the company has over 15,000 followers.

“I think in our sector we’ve probably got the most followers and we’ve built that through video content, showcasing research analysts and their notes, and some of the commentary they’re putting out around various market and stock movements.”

The channel helps the firm to celebrate successes, including talking about winning new clients, completing deals and transactions, and top tier media mentions.

The rest of the year will see more work on defining the company’s mission, vision and values.

“We need to work harder on externalising our values and communicating them to both our employees and our external audience.”

She holds to the view that brand is and will continue to be the most important thing in marketing.

“Just like any other marketing, it’s fairly straightforward. It’s about a clear and differentiated message that is conveyed via a strong brand and I don’t think that will change. Ultimately, whatever the channel, that’s what you’ve got to strive to achieve.”

She adds that the messages behind brand in the investment banking sector are starting to change, however – in particular around corporate responsibility as well as diversity and inclusion.

“Let’s face it, it’s traditionally been quite a male-heavy sector and there are various reasons for that.

“What’s starting to come out more – both because it’s important, and because clients are asking for it – is what are we doing around diversity and inclusion and corporate responsibility?  The sector is getting better at tackling these issues but there’s still a lot more to do.”

The firm has a diversity and inclusion committee, extended parental leave and an internship programme with a specific focus on giving opportunities to people who don’t necessarily know the sector that well.

“When I talk about brand message, it can’t just be saying we have scale and expertise, it has to be about more than that.”

These initiatives are helped by the fact that Panmure Liberum values marketing and understands that a sale doesn’t start with an invitation to pitch. There are many factors influencing that invitation, and that’s where marketing can really add value.

She notes that while the discipline may be different to other parts of financial services, marketing touches every single part of the business.

“I’m able to go across the whole business and ask what I can do to help them succeed. So actually it makes the marketing discipline more varied and broad than it might otherwise be.”