Let’s make up a brand. Yes, build a brand from scratch. Because you may not really have one. Oh, you may have a business. But there’s a difference. The business of McDonalds is making cheap food fast. The brand is about fun. “Lovin’ it,” from which everything else flows. The bright colors. The kids’ playroom with toys. And the whole upbeat tempo.
So, in this exercise, let’s say you are a bank. You do what most banks do: Offer checking and savings accounts, build investment portfolios, offer loans, the whole gambit.
What do you need first? You need a name, right? Well, not so fast. The importance of naming comes from the meaning you give to it. You can call your bank “A Bag of Dirt” and what would be okay – if you give it the right meaning and story.
Of course, you don’t wanna be known as A Bag of Dirt. We’ll come up with a better name. But you don’t start by tossing out names, hoping to find one you like.
You need a brand meaning first. Once you have that, the name reflects that.
How do you do that? Well, there’s a process.
Conduct brand research
Most agencies do what you expect. They’ll perform usage and attitude studies, which tell you almost nothing. You already know market share. You also know what people do when they bank. And you even already know what audiences say they want.
What do I mean by that? Most studies have open-ended questions, which result in a group of answers that aren’t very projectable to the larger market. They are either qualitative in nature or unactionable. Like beer drinkers saying they like the taste of the beer they drink. What do you do with that?
As Steve Jobs said, if you had asked people just before cars were invented what they want to improve transportation, they’d say a faster horse.
What you’re really looking for are emotional triggers. Who do your audiences aspire to be? What values do they believe are most important? Those kinds of questions give you the building blocks for a persuasive brand.
Analyze the competition
If you take a hard look at your competition, you’ll most likely find that everybody positions themselves in the same spot. It’s shocking, really. I recently worked with a college whose favorite slide was the one showing the competition. They couldn’t believe how similar they all were.
Since we’re looking at the banking industry in this exercise:
Chase Bank – “Make More of What’s Yours”
Bank of America – “What Would You Like the Power to Do”
Citi Bank – “For the love of…”
Wells Fargo – “That’s real life ready” or “Together we’ll go far”
US Bank – “The Power of Possible”
To be fair, most of these are throwaway taglines at the end of an ad campaign. There will be new ones on the next campaign.
But you get the point. How are audiences supposed to choose between these messages? Bank of America and US Bank are practically identical. Only Citi even hints at anything emotional.
And they aren’t positioned against each other.
Better yet, none of them really have a brand. If you were to say in one word each bank brand means, what could you say?
The best brands are single-minded with an emotional value. McDonalds is Fun. Disney is Magic. Tesla is Pioneer. Apple is Simplicity. Nike is Winning.Let’s capture an emotional value to build everything on.
Building the brand strategy
The third step in the process is identifying what makes our bank truly unique. Well, it’s hard to be unique in banking because it’s a mature market where the only differences are usually in rates, cash-back deals, and the sort.
Meaning, the only difference available is an emotional value. In our case, let’s say the only difference is location, meaning we’re headquartered in Greensboro, NC, where I live. But that doesn’t mean anything either. Local, as a value, isn’t as important as some think. After all, the tellers at Bank of America are local too.
If local meant anything, then why are the global banks still dominant? (You can ask that question in any category.)
What does the research say?
In the research, let’s pretend we found two important pieces of data. One, people find banking dull. They don’t go into the branches. They do most of their banking on mobile. And they rarely switch because it doesn’t seem like it’ll be any different over there.
The highest emotional intensity in the banking industry is…inertia.
How do you overcome inertia? By making it personal. Banking isn’t about the bank. It’s about you, the prospective customer.The second piece of research tidbit is that, when it comes to finances, people believe they should be in control. No, Mr. Banker, you don’t control what I do. I am in charge.
They aspire to understand without complication. They want to take care of it.
Why? Because taking care of things makes them feel more important.
From that emotional meaning, we develop a brand theme. Taking in all the research and competitive analysis, let’s establish it as this:
Stay on Top.
It suggests you’re already successful. You know what you’re doing. And you want to put “…of Things” at the end of it. Much like we all wanted to put the -ly at the end of Apple’s “Think Different.” It’s memorable.
How do we get a name and build a brand from that?
We now have an emotional brand value. Importance with the suggestion of control, expressed by the theme of “Stay on Top.”
In naming, there are basically three ways to go:
Combining two values – Groupon (Group + Coupon)
Descriptor – Bank of America (America’s Bank)
Representative – Nike (Goddess of Victory)
Considering availability (both as a trademark and an URL), we have options by thinking of things, values, and emotions that represent staying on top with the values of control, simplicity, and feeling important.
Combining two values
Descriptor
Representative
Before I go any further, just know these are top-of-mind examples to explain the process. I have led branding and research efforts for banks and credit unions. “Control” isn’t necessarily the most intensive emotional trigger in the banking market.
So, just stay with me here.
Any of these names would work. But, for this exercise in building a brand, let’s go with Diadem Bank. It suggests control and importance and allows us to tell a story.
In a future installment, we’ll talk about how you do tell that story. How is it told on your website? How does marketing play out?
However, we have an emotional idea. That’s what makes a great brand.