One Brand One Expression
Creating One brand, one look, one feel, one experience
Background
Following a number of mergers with and acquisitions of well known financial service companies, this new company needed to build a single brand. They wanted to create, over a three year period, consistency across its key businesses in terms of culture and climate, customer and intermediary interface and internal and external brand communications.
Our Approach
Phase 1
The first phase of the project was to define and agree a unique positioning for the brand in a highly competitive market place, which would be:
- appropriate for each of the company’s key businesses – differentiated from the competition – relevant and motivating to internal constituencies, intermediaries and end customers alike
It was hypothesised that this competitive space was likely to lie in the type of relationship wanted to / could have with its stakeholders. Through extended creativity sessions with all stakeholder groups, Occam Insight proved this hypothesis, presenting the findings from the sessions as inputs to a workshop with the core team at which the final positioning was agreed.
In addition, since key operating companies were all in very different situations vis a vis the desired positioning, Occam Insight advised on the phasing of activity to bring them into line.
Phase 2
The second phase required the development of a motivating creative approach to communicate the new positioning to all stakeholder groups, both internal and external.
Given the differences in experiences and perceptions of the company amongst the multiplicity of target audiences – and the need to build the brand from the inside-out – it was clear that an in depth exploration of responses was needed from each of the target audiences, but particularly the staff. It was also clear that it would be vital to examine the differences between junior, middle and senior personnel and between inward and outward facing staff. As a result, Occam Insight undertook a further wide-ranging and complex qualitative research project.
On the basis of insights from this project, Occam Insight was able to recommend how subtle nuances could be incorporated into a single creative approach to elicit the desired responses from staff, customers, potential customers, intermediaries and influencers.
Phase 3
The final phase of the project involved consideration of the brand as ‘employer’ and the development of a consistent and compelling message for all recruitment audiences, including recruitment consultants as well as potential new staff.
Again, Occam Insight developed recommendations to ensure that the brand would be speaking with a single, consistent brand voice, albeit with many accents.