We asked two dozen senior marketeers at a mix of UK and international financial services firms about brand identity and the importance of being able to clearly distinguish their brand from the competition.
What we heard is the absolute importance of brand ownership in their space, with each and every one stressing the need to own a particular part of their market. The majority however found this ‘ownership’ onerous to implement.
The main sticking points appear to be reluctance to change, a senior management stuck with an incumbent ‘comfort’ positioning, the apparent hoops required to jump through to undertake any change, concern about the size of the challenge, and a perceived lack of flexibility to move with the times.
In today’s world, where we all operate in busy and competitive marketplaces, it is hugely important to separate your brand from the noise. Brand management and being able to distinguish a brand from that of a competitor has never been more important.
It is not necessarily about wholesale macro changes across an organisation, which can be expensive and potentially disruptive, instead it can be incremental changes, which as part of a coordinated push, ultimately adds up to a material positioning change.
In financial services, particularly fund management, where there are multiple products in almost every sector, differentiating a name against that of a competitors and seeking to owning that part of the market is integral to standing out from the crowd.