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Successfully Repositioning a Building Society

This well-known UK financial institution had completed the takeover of an equally well-known competitor. The Board's challenge was to identify a new brand positioning that would unite two previously separate customer bases.

Successfully Repositioning a Building Society
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Branding in Financial Services

Issue

This well-known UK financial institution completed the takeover of an equally well-known competitor.

The Board’s challenge was to identify a positioning, proposition and product range for each of the two brands that would enable both to sit side by side on the high street without cannibalising each other’s business or customer base.

A number of suitable, proposition ‘candidates’ had already been developed.

Solution

Brandspeak was brought in to conduct a programme of qualitative research capable of:

•Identifying the most appropriate proposition, positioning and brand essence for each brand
•Defining the core product set – including key features and benefits – most appropriate for each.
•Understanding the hierarchy of service expectations, these new propositions and positionings gave rise to – also by brand

Brandspeak was also asked to conduct employee consultations with the staff of both brands in order to:

•Identify their concerns and issues regarding the takeover
•Finalise the detail of the communications strategies capable of:
•Informing and reassuring tens of thousands of staff
•Enabling staff to explain the implications of the takeover clearly and succinctly to customers and colleagues

Brandspeak conducted a total of 20 focus groups and 10 employee workshops across the two brands.

Outcome

The project was debriefed to the Board. The debrief recommended numerous changes to both brands and product ranges.

The research was also used as the basis for a series of animated videos to be shown internally as part of several training programmes that were created during the period of the merger and consolidation.

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Client Feedback

Lauren Williams

We worked with Brandspeak on a brand awareness project and we were extremely pleased with the quality of service and the process. They understood the complexity of the briefs and asked plenty of questions to make sure they fully understand the objectives. They interacted with all levels of people in our business and understood the differences within the market and suggested ways to tie the research together so it was still comparable. The results were delivered with easy to digest summaries that could be used across the business. We would highly recommend using them.

Lauren Williams