Santander rebrand – a case for brand evaluation?

So, megabank Santander is to rebrand its UK subsidiaries, gobbling up such old high street names as Abbey, Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley. Gut instinct says it must make all kinds of sense. The sub-brands no longer have he profile they once did, nor I would guess, attract the same loyalty they once did as mutuals. Santander is not a completely alien name in the UK, and the economies of scale and reach the bank can achieve in mounting global campaigns and butressing the status of the main brand seems eminently sound.

I just find myself wondering whether the great and good at Santander also just worked on that simple, empirical logic?  Or did they do a brand evaluation and really but some figures against the value of their brands. I say this out of my experience of major financial institutions.  Where their whole ethos is built upon numbers, values and calculations, strategic brand decisions are curiously more often made without such rigorous calculations of brand values.  Looking at the £12m they say the exercise will cost, I am sure they know exactly what savings they will make in stationery and marketing communications… but have they really worked out the value of those brands? When such decisions are made the oligarchic structure of the bank tends to kick in and corporate egos take over.

That said, my gut feeling is it is the right thing to do for an international brand… but moving from an endorsed identity to a monlithic one is a brave step and not without its hazards.  In today’s climate, especially for financial institutions, putting all your eggs in one brand basket may be a risky endeavour.

Location, location, location…

How much is location a brand asset? Cosmetic manufacturers often used to ad the ‘Paris, Rome, New York’  line to their corporate signature. Being located in a region or district famed for particular manufacture or production has long been seen as a strength – Sheffield for steel, Stoke for pottery or Northampton for shoes: even though some of those regions have seen almost terminal decline of their traditional manufacturing.

For financial institutions being located in, say, London or Frankfurt can be seen as a real brand asset, supposedly giving reassurance. Some organisations or industries are often as well known for their location as they are by their name: Langley, Detroit, Whitehall, Wall St, Dagenham. Madison Avenue, or ‘The City’.

Sometimes, not being in the generally recognised location can also make a strong statement about the brand and its values. The financial institution that shuns the city, or the IT company that chooses a rural barn for its HQ sends a message that they are not conformists and perhaps embody alternative values that some clients may find more in tune with their own.

For manufacturing companies, the globalisation of production has made the location of the head office, of central control, something to be nurtured and promoted.  I do a lot of work with exporters who, although they may now do a good deal of their manufacture in the far East, find the fact that they are British companies with all the perceived values of probity, reliability and quality, still a valuable and important quality in many markets.

For new and growing businesses, spend a few minutes to consider your location: what does it say about your company now, and what will it say in the future? Is it where you want to be, and more importantly, is it where your customers will want your brand to be?

Sorry my brand won’t be in today… it’s down with a virus

A client of mine has a horror of any social Internet activity and was rocked to his core when his new ad turned up on Youtube and went viral. There was nothing bad or contentious and I would have been quite pleased, but his problem with this was the ‘lack of control’.

Of course that is an issue and one that scares many businesses off anything to do with social media. But let us be realistic, all we have no control over is what people say or think about our brands… and this was always the case! The only control a company can exert is the way the company and the brand actually performs in the market place.

As I have stated many times brands are not ‘owned’ by the companies, they are owned by the public. If the company manages them well, with good stewardship they should have little to fear. I would be seriously worried if my brand was not strong enough to cope with a little gentle fun poking on a social Internet site.

Museum of Brands

As it’s a holiday, I just thought I would mention the Museum of Brands in London’s Notting Hill. If you didn’t know about it it’s well worth a visit.