In this throwaway society, it seems that in marketing terms, financial services brands are one of the worst culprits. Some might say they are dispensing with their brands at an alarming rate.

Yet, one would have thought that in a supposedly prudent industry, they would have held on to their brands dearly and lived by my maxim for the sector; even if they’ve never heard me or anyone else utter it, ‘When consumers are insecure, your brand’s communications must reassure.’

But the insecurity doesn’t just come from the consumer, it comes from many decision makers in the sector too and it is often quite astonishing. They’ve either never quite believed in their brand enough, so as to walk away from the next ‘big deal’, or not stuck long enough with what’s in the consumers’ interest to build their brand’s equity.

As the ex bankers of Lehman Brothers will still tell you today, ‘there’s no point in being in this business if you don’t take risks’. And we all know what happened to that iconic financial services brand.

So that’s the nature of financial services sector, it’s a belief that permeates all. Even those not directly involved in trading are bitten by the ‘consolidate and grow’ bug.

Yet there seem to have been a rash of such manoeuvres of late. But in my experience these activities are not new.

With little brand clarity, the financial services sector has always been somewhat slow on the uptake that attributing a personality with solid brand values to their business can prove valuable to their brand, to the business and their bottom line. And we advertising and marketing folk have not been slow to propagate that myth.

I vividly remember an article in Campaign highlighting the findings from a survey of those in ad agencies as to which business sectors they’d prefer to work on. The accounts that won out were of no surprise and the headline was…‘Finance is hell, but booze is swell.’

And so the marketing departments from Banks to Insurance Companies, from Investment Houses to Fund Managers and the National Savings, all believed it to some extent too.

In my view it is not only the brands, shareholders and their staff that suffered from this downbeat view, but all of us too.

There’s a tendency in the financial services sector to be brand reactive rather than proactive, when it comes to longer term brand development.

A lacklustre approach to brand creation, brand clarity and better brand marketing, bar a few outstanding campaigns in the mid 80s, meant few established an affinity with the consumer and less still were able to show they fulfilled genuine needs.

There was The Leeds with their Liquid Gold account ‘Arthur Daily’ campaigns, the strong brand identity of Scottish Widows in their moody, attractive, but very corporate campaigns and there were less strong identities marketed for brands such as Abbey National and Legal & General, seemingly vying for who could establish the strongest brand identity by making best use of an umbrella, or was it a hod carrier In Abbey’s case!

These aside, large budgets often resulted in half-hearted attempts to develop brands, but more so to appease shareholders, (many of whom were new ‘windfall’ stakeholders), that the companies were aiming to grow market share by being on TV.

But few brands could be deemed to have derived some form of personality or competitive advantage from the experience. There may well have been some warmth built around the brands, but could we differentiate between them?

The blurring between segments within the sector and very few doing very little to explain, meant that all us confused consumers had to go on, was that warmth. Increased regulation and information distributed by the forerunner of the FSA, the Personal Investment Authority and bodies such as IFAP, promoting the benefits of independent advice, did little to sharpen the focus.

The next decade brought a brief respite when Virgin Money came on the scene, as there was by M&S attributing its values to a financial services operation. But as mergers, takeovers and strategic alliances continue to take place, it is my experience that sadly many financial service brands revert to type and consumer interests become secondary.

There have been some attempts to retain past brand glories. Though it is somewhat incongruous to me that Barclays has maintained the Woolwich name for mortgage products, when you are patently not ‘with the Woolwich’ anymore!

Here I must confess a vested interest. As a senior account director at the agency who held the Woolwich account at the time of the merger/takeover, we had strategically and creatively moved the brand on, without throwing the baby out with the bath water.

In short, we all felt that the brand had legs and that if distinct brand identities as
well as budgets were maintained, the brand might stand a chance, because back
then it stood for something.

Instead, in Peperami style, the brand had its legs unceremoniously chopped from beneath it; though I do remember the senior execs at The Woolwich doing very nicely thank you, from the consuming of what one might consider an iconic financial services brand. And I don’t believe its call of ‘Do you wanna be in my gang?’, (thanks, Gary!), has been matched since in the sector, although Halifax does make a valiant and consistent effort.

I’m currently working with a long established accountancy brand whose bowler hatted founders were the inspiration behind Geers Gross’ flour graders for Homepride. And that brings to mind another bowler hatted duo, Bradford & Bingley.

Where has all the latent warmth built up in that brand gone? Again, executives there allowed an impasse to be created and did not move the brand on with the times and all they could do was accept the inevitable, when it was time to be swallowed up by Santander.

And then there are the meaningless holding company names that become the brand, engulfing all in their wake:

Way back, I was working on the Commercial Union account, moved agency to work on the General Accident account, then the two merged to become CGU only to later be consumed by the holding company that owned Norwich Union.

I remember editorial at the time, quoting company executives, saying Aviva would never become the trading name of the ‘tri-merger’. Yet here we are in 2009 and the undistinguished name of Aviva is replacing Norwich Union, which surely has/d some strong brand attributes. Though Commercial Union ‘not making a drama out of a crisis’ arguably had the greatest brand awareness and consumer affinity than any of the three and it didn’t stand the test of time. I’d warrant consumers in large numbers will still remember that strap line today. I’d love to read some qualitative research findings from consumers prior to these decisions being made. Assuming of course there was some undertaken?!

Am I a marketing man of the 80s? Maybe so, but I hope also of the 90s and naughties, so I can continue to espouse the benefits of creating strong financial service brands with credible values, bringing greater clarity to their communications, greater value to their businesses and a greater gap between they and their competitors. That is, better brand marketing.

Paul Weinstein
Paul Weinstein is a Director of PAW!