Add research to your arsenal

Smart brand research can enhance brand respect, value, durability and profitability

By Chris Martin Murphy

Financial services brands used to be able to maintain their reputations and perceived brand values by sheer weight of numbers. Ever-loyal customers combined with millions of dollars in advertising (‘the cudgel’ approach) were all that they needed to survive. Today, leading financial services brands can lose their reputation, and perceived value, faster than you can say ‘Alan Bond’.

The secret to maintaining and building brand value lies in better understanding the attitudes, issues and dynamics that initially formed the brand’s reputation. It also helps to understand which brand attributes are perceived to be most valuable, and why. This information can be used as support for a new brand positioning, and to develop a compelling proposition that clearly differentiates the brand from its competitors.

But before you embark on this journey, you’ll need research to identify and develop your brand’s potentially most powerful, distinctive, appealing and relevant proposition.

The first, and often incompletely taken, research step is simple desk research. This step is designed to establish where the financial services market is headed, and how your brand can prosper from any changes or trends. A review of competitors’ advertising can also provide a good indication of competitive product or service features and benefits.

Front-line staff in the branch or call centre are an excellent source of information about customer profiles, needs, problems and opportunities, and product or service strengths and weaknesses. They will also have a good understanding of your company’s perceived reputation and brand values, as well as perceptions of your competitors (where many of your front-line staff have worked before).

The next part of the ‘brand review’ is to summarise existing, recent (last two years), and relevant market and customer qualitative and quantitative research. (It’s amazing how seldom this ‘buried treasure’ is dug up and reviewed.) Summarise where the brand stands in terms of awareness, image, usage, strengths, vulnerabilities and opportunities.

But don’t stop there. Your latest brand tracking study will not suffice. It can tell you where your brand is now in relation to where it has been. It cannot, however, tell you where your brand needs to be in future. So next, you need to conduct qualitative research, usually in focus group discussions, but possibly including individual interviews for certain customer segments.

The research should explore:

The Brand Image: What is the holistic impression that customers and prospects have of the brand? How do they see the brand? What do they believe about the brand? How do competitor brands compare?

The Brand Reputation and Perceived Values: How much respect do customers and potential customers have for the brand? How much do they value the brand? What do customers most and least value about the brand? How do competitor brands compare?

The Brand Positioning: How is the brand positioned relative to its competitors by customers and prospects? How could this positioning be enhanced or improved?

The Brand Proposition: What does or should the brand offer? What is or should be the single major benefit of the brand to customers? What brand attributes and values best support that proposition? Is the brand proposition strong enough to promote significant switching to the brand?

The Brand Message: Which expression of the brand proposition is more likely to retain existing customers and acquire new customers? How unique, distinctive and compelling is this message?
The brand identity and symbol: What is the personality or identity of the brand? Just ‘who’ is the brand? What are its best and worst characteristics? Does it need to change? How? How does the brand symbol act as a visual metaphor for the brand proposition and/or the brand identity?

Additional, later, qualitative research can evaluate alternative brand propositions and identities, and the comparative appeal of alternative advertising directions and expressions, using advertising print concepts or TV storyboards as research stimuli. This advertising evaluation research can include impressions, attention, recall, interest, message comprehension, mood and style, likes and dislikes, and likely switching motivation.

Armed with all of this knowledge, the brand marketer can enhance, reshape or change the image, identity and positioning of their financial services brand. The results of better research can be used to develop a compelling and distinctive brand proposition that promotes an appealing set of positively perceived brand values. Ultimately, if managed well, the brand will become more respected and valued, more durable and more profitable.

Chris Martin Murphy is managing director of The Financial Research Company.