Global brand consultancy The Partners recently launched a comprehensive study entitled ‘To Be Or Not To Be’, which reveals what Britishness means for brands post-Brexit.
The Partners surveyed 1,000 consumers across the UK to garner the general public’s perception of British brands, and combined this insight with in-depth interviews with leading marketers to establish the value of British provenance for brands today.
The study found that many brands experience an identity crisis when trying to leverage a modern sense of Britishness. From a lack of clarity about who the target consumer is and their preferences, to a difficulty in identifying a defined set of British attributes, Britishness is becoming an increasingly complex aspect to employ, particularly for British brands positioning themselves as global entities.
Surprisingly, for a country known for its patriotism, the survey showed that just 25% of people consider a brand’s British heritage to be the most important factor in their purchase decision. This compares with 54% of participants rating the quality of product highest, 36% valuing customer service above all else and 29% placing emphasis on the brand’s individual culture and values.
But the survey also revealed a paradox: despite the majority of respondents believing that Britishness is not important when making a purchase, a significant 42% believe that brands should emphasise their Britishness more post-Brexit in order to appeal to a wider range of global consumers.
The Partners encourages brands to take advantage of these contradictions. This apparent ambivalence about the value of Britishness can be seen as an opportunity to redefine the roles that brands play in a world where being ‘British’ is no longer enough to compete in an already saturated market.
The report argues that by balancing the tension between the traditional notion of heritage and the ‘fresh themes’ and modern ingenuity at the heart of Britishness, brands will succeed with new and existing audiences, both in Britain and on a global stage.
This ability to balance the dualism inherent in Britishness is supported by the opinions of the marketers that The Partners surveyed, and is an attributing factor to the success of some of our most-loved British brands. This includes the BBC, which was voted the most admired British brand by 46% of participants in the survey.
The survey revealed that the top five most-admired British brands are:
- BBC
- M&S
- Cadbury
- Boots
- The Post Office
Sam Evans, strategist at The Partners, said: “Brexit has provided a moment for reflection on what Britishness represents. It also provides a choice, a fork in the road where brands can continue to assimilate in a global order of homogeneity or can choose to re-familiarise themselves with the ingredients that make Britishness a potent force. We believe that now, more than ever, it’s time for British brands to reclaim their Britishness. It’s in the interests of brands to build on and develop the positive associations for a new era.”
(Source: The Partners)
Speaking on the developing relationship between consumers and the financial sector, here Tracey Follows, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer of The Future Laboratory, offers her take on the future of the consumer finance sector.
Money. It is something that is in the back of most normal people’s minds most of the time.
But the brands involved in money are not generally amongst the public’s favourite or most salient brands. Stop anyone in the street and ask them to name their favourite brand, and it is not likely to be a bank, an insurer, or an aggregator. And if people are happy with their bank or insurance, they don’t talk about it.
What does peak consumer interest though, is the prospect of making something onerous or boring a little bit simpler, quicker, more convenient or better value. And it’s around these benefits that we see the consumer finance sector pivoting and changing.
The arrival of so called FinTechs, companies offering new technology and ways to manage money – Apple Pay, PayPal and Circle, or Bot based automated savings services like Digit – is changing our relationship with money and finance. And with 40% of Brits believing that the image of big name banks has deteriorated in the past year, it’s no surprise that money clubs and a new generation of digital alternatives are beginning to be used in place of the traditional banks.
As the march towards a cashless society continues, and as new entrants and non-financial brands begin to offer real replacements to traditional financial services, the traditional finance brands are going to have to adapt.
So how fit are the category players and their brands to face the future?
The Future Laboratory has identified six key behaviours that make a business ‘fit for the future’. These include: Long Term Planning, Brand Stretch, Innovation, Conscious Business, Thriving Employees, and Agility.
Within the sector of consumer finance there are some very different types of business. Traditional banks, Insurers, and payment firms such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard are all there. But there are some common themes and challenges despite their obvious differences.
For the purposes of comparison, we’ve looked at the brands in this sector in two broad groups: Banks and building societies and ‘Others’ – a more eclectic group made up of insurers, aggregators and payment gateways.
All the brands in this sector score above average on Agility, a measure of the brand and businesses ability – in financial terms, to actually make its ideas come to fruition. Only eight of the 45 brands making up these two groups fall outside the top 50% of all 547 brands in this study. To be expected, given the nature of these businesses.
Where these groups start to pull apart is when you look at Brand Stretch and Conscious Business. The last couple of years has seen consumer trust and the reputations of banks fall away as tales of scandal, collapse, failure and huge salaries have been paraded through the media. While some individual brands fare better than others, as a group every single brand falls well outside the top 50% of all brands in the study on Brand Stretch with banks being pulled down by poor reputation scores.
Presumably, in an attempt to correct their failing reputations and to answer to ever greater calls for transparency and honesty in the sector, these same banking brands score very well on our Conscious Business behaviour. This is a measure which assesses if a company or brand is behaving in an ethical way that doesn’t have adverse effects on people, wherever they are in the world. Consumers understand that they are part of a “whole system” and they increasingly don’t want to buy from companies that are having a bad impact on the environment or on people. They increasingly expect brands to publicly own their impact on both.
On this measure, the overwhelming majority of banking brands are fully compliant with the GRI – the global reporting initiative that provides a method for companies to assess and report their impacts on the environment and society.
The other, non-banking business and brands simply haven’t faced the same pressures and it shows when you look at their Brand Stretch scores, making allowances for the general apathy to finance brands, they score much better. They are much less concerned with ethical behavior (and so far, haven’t had to be)
The comparison between PayPal and Halifax – the two best brands in each sub group within consumer finance – shows that each group needs to learn from the other if they are to be fit for the future.
The traditional retail banks need to look towards servicing their consumer and future consumer in ever more innovative ways while continuing to rebuild trust, reputation and therefore their brand.
The others can’t afford to ignore the lessons of the last few years and that includes the drivers of Conscious Business. They could bolster their brands by doing so and help to insulate themselves against any future scandal in the eyes of the ultimate judge – the consumer.
With fintech at the forefront of innovation in the financial services sector, Finance Monthly here benefits from an insightful outlook into the kinds of challenges fintech firms face, in the midst of growing competition and an ever-increasing customer base. Michael Quirke, Senior Strategist at Brand Union here provides the ultimate breakdown of priorities every fintech brand should be considering.
Financial technology (fintech) investment is forecast to grow beyond $150bn over the next few years, and many new market entrants are trying to get in on the game.
The challenge as this evolves is going to be how you stand out. People have to be able to remember your name and who you are. And not everyone can become the Monzo, Xero or TransferWise of this world.
Getting to that space requires a pragmatic approach to branding that takes consideration of the limited factors you have under your control: an often small marketing budget, primarily online touchpoints and (hopefully) an excited team who are eager to spread the word about the new platform. The worries then are consistent with any other company: how do I attract and retain the best talent? How do I meet my growth targets? How do I position this company to scale?
For more technically-minded companies, this ‘softer’ side of creating the brand that people remember can be a challenge. So from our work with Sonovate, a funding platform for recruitment agencies, we wanted to share a few principles from what we’ve learned.
- Go back to basics - why are you here?
One of the biggest challenges fintechs face is explaining a complex offer. It is very easy to get caught up in industry jargon, or hooked onto a functional sales playbook that served you in a rush when first starting out. People need to understand clearly who you are, what you offer and why they should care. And they’re not waiting to get to know you, so you need to be able to show that in under 3 seconds. Work on making as simple as possible who you are, what you do and why you’re here and you have a good platform for making that creative. Talk it to yourself. It’s healthy.
- Know your audience
Another challenge - especially again for technically-minded companies - is thinking in benefits vs product features. You need to know who exactly your customer is and how what you’re pitching fits into their lives. For instance, for Monzo they are very humble and focused about what their product does. It’s there as a pre-pay card, they make it as easy as possible to manage on mobile, and they open up their product roadmap to their community of beta testers to add in feature suggestions as they go. The actual feature set is quite small, but they make the most out of each one by being very diligent in UX design and communicating it well. For them, it is a mass audience of (currently) dedicated tech fans and students, but for you it may be B2B or more niche B2C. Think how you can quickly get a ‘map’ of your audience’s life and world, and make sure all product decisions, features and communications are guided towards fitting in easily there.
- Make the most of your touchpoints
Monzo has bright orange debit cards that draw just the right amount of attention when flashed. TransferWise have their sharply designed ads and a pointedly anti-bank tone of voice. Citymapper (not a fintech, but useful analogy) has their “jetpack” or “catapult” ways of travelling in-app. Small touches of delight you add, on top of the basics, make your experience more memorable and, thereby, more sticky. Building stickiness or virality into the design of your products and onboarding experience has more power than any amount of content marketing.
- Nurture your community
As more technology companies spring up, covering a wide base of offers, becoming the preferred partner in your category is essential. This means cultivating a community and partnership strategy as soon as possible in your lifecycle - deciding which apps you are going to target to integrate with (see the Slack playbook), and how you are going to reward and engage users to keep them interested. Forming a community platform like Monzo’s has the added benefit of providing regular user feedback, that can feed into the product and brand. On B2B side, the community forum can be doubly effective in helping end-users quickly and elegantly fix issues with the platform; and pass on the experience to friends or family at other businesses.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate
Email marketing is a skill in itself, but an essential one to get right. However you contact users (whether in-app or on email), make sure that at all times you are a) putting in place a system to manage any concerns or feedback on new features, b) keeping in line with your core brand positioning and tone of voice (so as not to seem inconsistent or overly sales-y) and c) giving users the opportunity to input into the future of the platform. Whether working with B2C or B2B clients this is a huge advantage, and you can always filter and take your own opinion on responses as they come in.
Branding in the fintech age is a very different proposition from the suave logos and airport ads it used to be. But the same classic rules of knowing what you’re offering and why people should care apply. As long as you are clear enough on these things to let your teams get creative with them, you shouldn’t go far wrong. We look forward to seeing you on-stage at Finovate Europe 2018.
