Recently, a financial institution I quite respect (my last daughter is one of its shareholders) surprised me. I cannot claim to have knowledge of what informed its decision to ‘re-brand’ (or was it ‘reposition?’) but as a marketing communication analyst, I can only do an objective critique of what I saw.



I do not recall a merger and/or acquisition involving the organization, and if there was, the exercise did not radically alter its name. All the teaser ads, ‘advocates’ on our major roads brandishing an associated ‘guess-colour,’ all gave me the impression that it was about a new product. You can then imagine my disappointment when I realized that the company behind it all was a respected bank! What could actually be the issue? I had expected that the marketing communication consultancy it engaged would focus more on dousing the negative press reports about its boardroom crisis.

I also noticed that the bank changed its traditional advertising agency in preference for a ‘brand consulting’ outfit. Did owners of the bank revisit the brand with the purpose of updating or revising based on internal or external circumstances? Could the brand have outgrown its identity or marketplace? I should like to believe that the latter could not have been the case. Alternatively, could all the communication activities have aimed at giving the bank a new position in customers’ minds so as to alter or expand its potential market? Again, this is not likely because the brand had never led an obscure existence.

Why all the razzmatazz then? Many of our self-acclaimed ‘branding authorities,’ be they from the academic or from the business world, monotonously champion using marketing tools to solve brand strategy problems. Why do you embark on customer research when all that is needed is to inwardly focus more on identifying brand values? Why change your brand strategy? Have you successfully implemented the existing strategy? Have you given it time to work? Or are you merely over reacting to market fads and other things that are in vogue?

Were there new types of competitive threat? Did the bank in question notice enduring changes in its market environment? Or were there fundamental shifts in consumer attitudes and values? I did not notice an unfamiliar threat neither were enduring changes in the banking industry glaring. And the bank was highly-ranked by the appropriate authorities- so it could not have suffered patronage. Rather what I see happen in every market is subscription to ‘Noise.’

Your competitors keep coming and leaving, making some form of impression courtesy of fads and fashions of the marketplace. I felt indignation that the much-respected bank could fall for this inconsequential market distraction no thanks to a ‘branding guru’ who

ought to know better if he was truly sincere about wanting to help build a brand for the long-term. Why did the bank have to re-brand when it was an already established brand? If it did because it wanted to penetrate perceived new markets, then it made a costly mistake. The undue emphasis of the campaign on the new logo and the bank’s modified name only shows that branding still seems to be logo-fixated. It is also seen by many as a matter of placing that logo in the upper right-hand corner of pieces of communication.

On the contrary, branding should go beyond an attitude, or a logo, or a slogan, or an advertising campaign. Brand building does not stop with the logo. Rather, branding is communicating the spirit of your brand as customers hardly care about your logo. Why companies quickly turn to branding as a panacea keeps beating my imagination because what should be more important is the market share and not the mindshare! After spending so much time and money on advertising and marketing, have the conditions that informed the bank’s quest to re-brand changed?

You will be surprised to learn that at a point sales is branding- the more sales you land, the more market share you have, the more people see and hear about you, and the more they will think of you. On the day Nigeria marked its 42nd independence anniversary, Gateway, America’s fourth-largest PC maker, unveiled a new “branding" initiative- a sleeker (more generic) logo. About five months later, the company changed its ad agency (for the third time in 14 months)! What was the lesson? The logo and advertising did not lie at the root of its problems!

Word of Mouth (WOM) is a powerful brand-building tool, especially when those words are positive. Having encountered the bank a couple of times in the past, I do not think the re-branding could have been about polishing its image. But it must have been quite painful going through the expense of new packaging, bank signage, stationery, etc. Talk about millions of naira in unrecoverable hard costs! While it was good for the ‘brand consultant’ as he must have screamed to his bank, for the Management of the bank, it was a lousy decision.

I just wonder why corporate marketing heads should not begin to enlist the support of the company chief accountant in branding exercises. Brands need to be seen as measurable corporate assets- as a matter of fact, brand management is now seen as corporate management (John Kuraoka 2006). HSBC, formerly the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the UK-based banking and financial services group owns Midland Bank, one of Britain’s best-known and oldest commercial banks. It has also maintained

a major presence in Asia for over 100 years.

How did HSBC replace hundreds of Midland bank signs in villages in England, Scotland and Wales with red HSBC hexagons? Implementation in a cost-effective manner was done by the bank’s finance department, which completely ruled out using outside marketing/brand consultants. Rather than change the bank’s name in 24 hours, they chose a less expensive, step-by-step approach. They refused to condemn huge stationery stocks

on a single day as it would have amounted to a monumental waste of money. Implementation was on a replacement basis with a phased approach to signage.

If you are already thinking that the marketing department, more image-conscious, no longer talked to the accountants then your guess is wrong. The marketing guys actually heartily worked with them! Conversely, why are all the formerly established companies spending fortunes to re-establish themselves as re-made entities and surrendering their brand identities to confusions occasioned by new and emerging firms? According to John Kuraoka, a freelance advertising copywriter, the Kodaks, Nissans, Levi’ses and CompuServes of this world could, with more wisdom and less cost, rise above the “chaos."

I do not endorse the HSBC approach of keeping out external marketing consultants and advertising professionals because it is hard to see the value in the brand you already have. You may not be able to easily examine your brand and continue to retain its value and as such it is also imperative that you employ a smart advertising copywriter who understands brand strategy and can help bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Perhaps, through a change in positioning instead of in branding you harness the power of your existing brand while at the same time repositioning your company for growth.

I still believe in WOM- it is all about managing your customer’s expectations. You should give us more than we expect and do not over promise and under deliver. I hear that Louis Vuitton, maker of luxury leather goods, does repairs “especially for its customers" though it does not explicitly offer a lifetime warranty on its products (Martin Lindstrom 2005). This certainly builds the LV brand!

New in the UK sometime this year while vacationing, I needed to convert my traveller’s cheques to pounds sterling and so I headed for Barclays Bank. Why on earth did the teller and her supervisor make me sign each cheque before disclosing their commission-charge? HSBC, upon approaching them, said they would have cashed the cheques for me at 0% commission if I had signed before them! 3% commission was a lot of money especially when you consider that my bank in Nigeria had made its own deduction from my account- was it painful! Thomas Cooke, owners of the TC was even talking of 5% commission! The Post Office also offered 3% but said I had voided the cheques for not signing before its staff.

Of course the Barclays Bank teller and her supervisor were eagerly awaiting my return! I had no choice but submit myself to the bank’s painful deduction. Good marketing strategy by the bank but negative words in my mouth! That is the power of WOM. I actually headed for Barclays because it was here in Nigeria in my growing up years- brand familiarity. But after that experience, I think my “main bank" should be HSBC. So henceforth when I find myself where both banks are, I would rather opt for HSBC.

The consolidation in our banking industry has led to name changes but longtime customers should be able to stick around if vestiges of the former banks remain.

Every successful brand keeps its visual identity fresh with occasional changes that are so mild they can hardly be noticed. Your brand’s visual identity can be current without making a fuss about it!

However, I reiterate that there should be an interface between the chief accountant and the marketing director in every organization particularly in the area of seeking brand value; the ultimate goal will be to work together with the CEO in developing a strategy.