Tag: experiential

Direct Mail, Email and your brand

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Direct Mail and Email marketing are critical components of any branding strategy for either a business to business or business to consumer brand. And it is a growing business. But the quality of Direct Mail and Email marketing in Malaysia and the mining and management of the databases used is horrendous.

If you own a company and you want to destroy any equity there may be in your brand, prepare a badly written product sheet on your desktop and when you are finished, don’t bother to spell check the document.

Print 50,000 copies and shove them in all the letterboxes of as many office or apartment complexes in the Klang Valley as you can. While you are sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring (assuming you included it on the flyer – and believe me, some don’t), your ‘DM campaign’ is being thrown in the rubbish bin by the lift, used as a place mat for lunch or simply thrown on the floor by the mail boxes. Hardly an inspiring ‘moment of truth’ first time experience for your brand and potential customer.

Another way to damage your brand is to send the wrong material to the wrong people. I have three kids, two under the age of 13. Yet this year they have both received two offers from credit card companies. These offers state that applicants must be at least 18 years of age.

A lot of firms are moving away from DM to save money on the printing of their flyers or brochures and looking at Email marketing. Although figures are unavailable for Malaysia, the Direct Marketing Association in the UK informs us that 90% of companies are now using email marketing.

There is no doubt that a well thought out and planned email campaign can be effective and profitable. But too many firms don’t do this and instead are simply adding to the seven trillion spam messages expected to be delivered to inboxes around the world in 2011.

I signed up with a local event organiser for information on forthcoming branding and marketing seminars that they organise in the region. Within a week my inbox was inundated with emails related to human resources, accounting, insurance, motivation and other topics I have nothing to do with and no interest in. These emails are trashed with the same irritation as the ones for Viagra, lottery wins and Nigerian banks.

Despite my repeated requests to be unsubscribed from their list, I continue to receive multiple emails. I cannot simply mark the email as ‘junk’ because they are using a Gmail account and this will send all mail from Gmail addresses to my trash. The name of the company is ingrained in my subconscious, but for all the wrong reasons and it is now a matter of principle that we will not sign up for any event organized by this firm.

I have received about 10 emails in the past month from an insurance company that recently spent RM13 million (US$4 million) on a rebranding exercise. The emails are not personalized, the attachment is of a flyer that is dull and states in two places that the offer is exclusively for Mastercard holders yet I don’t have a Mastercard.

I really lose faith in financial institutions and other companies when they make such mistakes. Think of the money wasted on the cost of the name, flyers, administration and so on.

The rewards for good campaigns are significant. The Direct Marketing Association reports that more than RM550 billion was spent on direct marketing advertising (including email marketing) in 2008 and sales generated from that were an astonishing RM6,450 billion! There is no question then that DM can be effective because it allows consumers to read about the products and services before deciding to explore further, or even buy.

But it has to be done properly. It is not enough simply to create a campaign and send it out. It is also important that the content resonates with the target market. And you still need to ‘sell’ the product. Just because you have got into the prospect’s inbox, doesn’t mean the prospect will buy.

The key for all direct marketing or email marketing is get the customer information right in the first place and keep it updated accurately thereafter. If you are collecting a lot of leads but don’t have the resources to input and clean the data, then outsource. There are many firms offering such services and it will be money well spent.

There is an edict within Direct Marketing industry that says, “Right offer, right person, right time.”

So it’s time for Malaysian firms, from SME up to main board, to end all this untargetted, uninspiring, untrackable, unproofed direct mail and start building brands with quality marketing collateral.

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Why you should start building your Brand today

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This article first appeared in the Friday 29th April 2011 edition of The Malaysian Reserve/International Herald Tribune

Does this statement sound familiar? “I know I need to start thinking about building my brand but I don’t know where to start so it can wait.”

I’ve heard this statement a lot recently and if it is a general feeling throughout the business community, then we’ve got a problem.

We’ve got a problem because as Malaysia becomes an increasingly wealthy country it will increasingly become a target for global brands that have seen their penetration in more traditional markets reach saturation point.

Moreover, free trade agreements and stagnant manufacturing or services based economies are also encouraging global brands to take notice of countries like Malaysia.

In the last twelve months, major global brands from the agriculture, automotive, aviation, biotechnology, education, fashion, food, hospitality, logistics, property, transportation and other sectors that in the past have barely considered Malaysia, are now establishing offices here.

Even Unilever owned brand Marmite, a quintessentially British savoury spread most often used on toast, now has sales in excess of RM20 million in Malaysia, mainly because it makes a bowl of congee a little more interesting!

And as these global brands take note of Malaysia they will invest substantial funds to establish their brands here and once those brands are established, it will be difficult for Malaysian products and services to compete with them. Unable to compete, over time, these Malaysian brands will fail.

So Malaysian firms really must begin the process of building brands now, rather than later. The good news is that beginning the process of building a brand or revamping an existing company has many benefits. Some of the most significant include the ability to charge more for products and services as well as a reduction in costs. Furthermore, changes in technology and communications mean that Malaysian firms might not have to invest significant funds into mass communications.

A word of warning though. Any branding initiative should begin with a careful analysis of the organization, its processes and systems, especially those that are customer facing and whether or not it has a customer centric culture, what it stands for and whether these elements are relevant today. Be ready for bad news but see it as feedback and an opportunity to improve not as criticism.

And once the brand is ready, communications should focus not on broadcasting how wonderful the brand is across traditional mass media channels, but on engaging prospects with content that resonates with them and delivering economic, emotional and experiential value to consumers and across all touch points.

Here are six more reasons why you shouldn’t wait to start to build a brand.

Reason No 1: Branding unifies your organization & motivates staff
Your people will want to be part of a respected and recognized brand because personnel who can identify with and support a brand’s culture, values and behaviour are better motivated, more loyal and engaged, both internally and externally.

As a result, your people will have pride and an interest in the company they work for and what they do for that company. Morale will improve, productivity will rise and resignations will be reduced. Moreover, a culture that strives to deliver value to customers and on customer terms will prevail. This in turn will lead to increased sales.

Reason No 2: Branding integrates & enhances brand touch points
This is really important. Organisations with weak or non-existent brands more often than not, make promises they cannot keep, focus on acquiring customers but pay little attention to existing customers and underestimate the importance of the customer experience. By developing a brand and building processes and systems into the brand delivery system, every single touch point between your organization and the consumer will be geared towards delivering a positive experience. Positive brand experiences will go a long way towards building customer loyalty, key to profitability.

Reason No 3: Branding reduces costs
What better incentive can there be for building a brand? Branding requires a brand strategy and a strategy will anticipate multiple scenarios and prepare the organization for outcomes, reducing the likelihood of expensive cost over runs or unexpected expenses.

Furthermore, a well recognized and well respected brand attracts talent, reducing the need for time consuming recruitment campaigns and expensive head hunters. A brand also reduces marketing costs. Less established products or services can spend up to 10% of revenue on marketing, brands often spend as little as 0.8% up to 2% on marketing.

Reason No 4: Branding justifies a price premium
Yet another major incentive for anyone still not convinced they should be building a brand. Branding allows you to charge more for your product or service because people will pay more for a name they can trust and have confidence in.

Reason No 5: Branding shortens the sales cycle
A strong, well respected and recognized brand creates trust and an emotional attachment to the product which also helps to make purchasing decisions easier. Over time, this influences the speed at which a prospect or customer makes that purchasing decision. This in turn allows a company to build customer loyalty and create brand ambassadors to sell the brand on their behalf, shortening the process further.

Reason No 6: Branding blocks competition
By focusing on building a brand rather than carrying out a series of transactions, you will ‘ring fence’ your brand and stop the competition from poaching your customers. As interactions with your brand increase, customers will automatically think of you when thinking of your category, thereby ignoring competitors.

In an increasingly competitive and noisy environment where better established global brands with deeper pockets are starting to flex their muscle, it is imperative that Malaysian firms, large and small start to build their brands now, before global brands get a foot hold in the country and it is too late.

How to build a brand in Asia today

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Building brands has evolved from the one dimensional, top down era where the company controlled the relationship and essentially managed that relationship using broadcasts across mass media such as TV, Out of Home, print and radio with messages and content created to tell you what the company wanted you to know into the bottom up, customer economy.

In the bottom up customer economy, brands and their success or failure are defined and determined by customers. Those customers will create content and messages and disseminate that content and those messages across multiple platforms and to communities who are interested in their opinions. Now, how you interact with consumers is on their terms.

This is not revolution, simply evolution in the branding space. Brands are to blame for this loss of control because they have consistently misled consumers or over promised and under delivered. Brands can no longer be built using one-size-fits-all messages broadcast across traditional media channels to anyone who will listen. Basically because no one is listening.

Sure, there is still a place for messages, campaigns, and so on but because there are so many sources of information, so much clutter, these messages don’t have the impact or influence they had 20 or 30 years ago. In the digital age you can spend as much as you want on traditional media and reach everyone in the country but if they are not listening they won’t buy your product or service.

If a brand wants to be successful it must learn to communicate with multiple segments, and messages must be targeted and must be dynamic, using content and channels that resonate with those segments. But brands must move away from the traditional demographic approach to researching those segments. After all, how many 15 – 24 communities are there on Facebook? And content must constantly be revised and updated with new content.

And organizations must ensure that they deliver on promises and that promise must deliver economic, experiential and emotional value to each of those multiple segments. In the consumer business, this is most often done, initially anyway, in the store. Because in the customer economy, no matter how much you spend, if your staff don’t know how to build rapport with your prospects then they may buy once but rarely will they become a loyal customer. And without loyal customers, you won’t have a brand.

So if you are looking to build a brand, forget about reach, awareness, positioning and brand equity and trying to be all things to all people and start thinking about delivering value to specific segments and building customer equity.

Twitter users increasingly influential

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Twitter estimates that there are 26 million monthly Twitter users online in 2010. This is not that significant compared with the 500 million using Facebook.

But it’s not the numbers that matter, it’s the quality of the users that count. Twitter users are far more influential than other online users. In fact, a recent study by ExactTarget considers Twitter users to be the most influential online.

Quote “While the number of active Twitter users is less than Facebook or email, the concentration of highly engaged and influential content creators is unrivaled — it’s become the gathering place for content creators whose influence spills over into every other corner of the internet.”

The study, conducted in April 2010 found that the main reason consumers follow brands they like on Twitter is to gather news and information about the company and its products and to learn about future sales and likely discounts. Interestingly the study found that brands are still not participating in conversations with followers, reducing the opportunity for the brands to build relationships with consumers that cannot be duplicated, like the sales and discounts.

Reasons for this might be because brands are seeking social media advice from advertising agencies who prefer to recommend traditional broadcasting of messages from the brand rather than engagement with consumers that gives more responsibility for the brands development to the consumer.

Building a 400 year old brand is a strategic initiative

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Shepherd Neame, the oldest brewer of beer in the UK was established in 1608 or 402 years ago! An amazing heritage and the brewer likes to play on this heritage with its advertising campaigns for brands such as Spitfire, Canterbury Jack and Bishops Finger.

The brewer allocated its entire 2006 advertising budget, which was about £300,000 (US$450,000) to one of those, Spitfire a real ale, and all of the budget was spent on the London Evening Standard, an afternoon/evening newspaper in London. This was considered a radical change of strategy. As well as print ads, content and sponsored supplements, the brand also sponsored the Evening Standard’s football World Cup special feature in May of that year. The strategic agency was John Ayling & Associates and the creative agency was RPM3. Promotional support such as free pint promotions were also included.

The really well executed and edgy “Bottle of Britain” campaign ran over six months and is one of my favourite campaigns. Here are some samples of the award winning creative work that was considered controversial and was investigated by the advertising watchdog Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK after complaints about the use of SS insignia. The complaints were later rejected by the ASA. You’ll need to have some knowledge of history, colloquial English as well as WWII jargon to really appreciate the ads.

Spitfire

You can find more examples of their campaigns on the Facebook page here

But Shepherd Neame understands that advertising campaigns are not enough to build and grow a strong brand. As a result, the company continues to invest in state of the art SAP technology and bottling technology, new acquisitions of high turnover pubs and refurbishments of existing properties to create airy, spacious and clean environments.

The company also invests extensively in merchandise including a bottle of Britain book, social media and charity work (Spitfire originated as a charity brew) and will link the brand to the extensive 70th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Britain due to be held in the UK later this year. Also look out for its campaigns related to the 2010 football world cup.

All these elements ensure the brands offer experiential, emotional and economic value to both new and existing customers.

It comes as no surprise therefore that despite the recession and clouds of uncertainty, red tape and increased taxes and shocking weather in the UK, turnover was up 8.2% to £60 million in the last six months of 2009 proving that investing in brands is not just about edgy and controversial advertising campaigns, but a long term strategic imperative to continue to build on a 400 year heritage!

Singapore Airlines Suites, branding blunder or recession victim?

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There have been numerous branding blunders and you can read about some of them here but rarely does Singapore Airlines feature. Singapore Airlines (SIA) consistently leads the industry in profitability and manages to ride out turbulent times better than most in its class. It has always been aggressive, acquiring aircraft and expanding its fleet quickly, in 1979 it set a record at the time, when it traded relatively new aircraft for an updated version of the B-747 for a then record of S$2.2 billion. SIA also differentiated itself early on with its adoption of the Singapore Girl as the face of the airline and service as the unique selling point.

But the world of today and the world of the 1970s are very different. The 1970s were the halcyon days of the mass economy. In the mass economy, with its mass markets and mass media, perhaps a little bit of help from the government and a large dose of nationalism. And by broadcasting the same message to large audiences who had limited sources of information, it was a lot easier for an airline to establish a brand.

More of this and more of that and better this and better that or bigger this and bigger that coupled with large advertising budgets worked well. As competition increased, consumers became more segmented and media choices fragmented, like many other industries, airlines turned to positioning as a strategy.

Positioning
Positioning consisted of creating a position in prospects minds that reflected the strengths and weaknesses of the offering as well as those of competitors. Ideally, this position was based on being first in a particular category. If someone was already first in a category, then companies attempted to redefine themselves in a new category to be first. In the airline business, this tended to be related to passenger comfort or service. The effectiveness of positioning depended on the ability of advertising to drive branding perceptions in the mind of consumers. To do this, airlines often made promises they were unable to keep (admittedly, often due to third party issues out of their control), failed to meet traveller expectations, often because dynamic competitors moved quickly and so raised the bar, which in turn led to brand disillusionment.

Positioning was ideal for the mass economy. It was also ideal for advertising agencies and marketing departments because it gave them enormous power without the responsibility of accountability. Al Ries and Jack Trout invented the concept of positioning. The preface to one book states, “Positioning has nothing to do with the product,…. (it) is what you do in the mind of the prospect.” So, essentially this means that the consumer can be made to believe, through extensive advertising and PR in the right conduits to consumers, and other vehicles, what an offering means to them.

Airbus A380
When Airbus announced it’s super plane, the Airbus A380, ever aggressive, SIA was one of the first to sign up and the first A380 delivered was delivered to Singapore Airlines on 15 October 2007. It entered service on 25 October 2007 with an inaugural flight from Singapore to Sydney. Passengers bought seats in a charity online auction paying between US$560 and US$100,000 for seats. Understandably, the new aircraft, a clever publicity stunt and an inquisitive general public, generated a lot of media coverage and by the end of February 2009, a million passengers had flown with Singapore Airlines on the A380.

Suites
But the majority of those passengers are flying economy. The problem has been getting passengers to use the suites, positioned as, “a class beyond first.” When the new A380 service was launched, in the way that has always done, SIA used global TV, print and online advertising and PR campaigns to launch the new A380.

Beautifully executed TVCs were developed for the Suites by a top advertising agency using taglines such as “your own private bedroom in the sky”. Other taglines included “an unprecedented level of privacy” in a “cabin unlike any other”, and sleeping on a “standalone bed that was not converted from a seat”. Givenchy Beddings (and pyjamas) Ferragamo toiletries and Krug or Dom Perignon were also part of the deal.

But despite a unique product, some slick marketing based on a huge investment in a one-size-fits-all message to mass markets using mass media, consumers and corporations haven’t bought into it. Why not?

Lack of research
One of the reasons could be that SIA didn’t talk to customers and prospects about what they might want from such a service, and, more importantly, how much they would be preparred to pay for it. In fact, it appears that SIA didn’t even engage with members of its Frequest Flyer Programme. SIA simply went ahead and developed the product and then, in a traditional 4 Ps (product, price, place and promotion) and positioning strategy, tried to sell it.

To make it even harder for themselves, and despite charging a premium of more than 50% over the first class fare, SIA would only reward loyal members of its Frequent Flyer Programme (FFP) Krisflyer with 10% more miles than a regular first class ticket! Moreover, any redemption of miles could only be for economy, business or first class and not for the Suites!

According to Shashank Nigam, “Several HR departments of companies, including civil service departments in Singapore, issued circulars or directives stating that “Since the Singapore Airlines Suites are a class beyond first, officers who are usually eligible for First Class travel will be ineligible for Suites”. So by now, SIA had upset its two most important customers, its own government and elite members of the frequent flyer programme!

In 2008, as the economic crisis began to take hold and suite sales nosedived, SIA maintained its pricing strategy, making it even harder for financial institutions, already under scrutiny for lack of risk management, to justify such extravagance.

Another reason for the poor response is probably related to the ground experience. Although positioned as a class beyond first, elite passengers were expected to use the same check-in facilities as passengers travelling in first class, the same lounge and essentially, the same food as first class passengers.

Premium revenues drop by 40%
By the middle of 2009, SIA was feeling the heat on a number of fronts. The economic situation gripping the world caused international premium passenger numbers to fall by 18% year on year in the first 10 months of 2009. At the same time, premium revenues dropped by up to 40% over the same period (IATA). Another challenge was from competitors such as Emirates and Qantas who don’t offer Suites but do have exceptional first class experiences including cabins on their A380s that feature a Bar and bathrooms with showers, limousine transfers at departure and arrival (not available to SIA passengers, even those using Suites).

SIA reviews incentives
SIA scrambled to recover some marketshare. The first incentive was a free night’s accommodation at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore for all passengers flying Suite class. Neat, but hardly enough to justify a 50% premium over first class. Then SIA remembered the people who have made it such a success story in the past, first class passengers and lucrative members of Krisflyer. SIA relented on the bonus miles and began offering 300% bonus miles instead of 10%. Definately a step in the right direction but perhaps too little too late as it is rumoured that a significant number of key SIA customers have defected to Emirates and Qantas. If this is true you can be sure these airlines will make it harder for these premium passengers to leave than did SIA.

So what could SIA have done better? Here are 5 things I would have done although, if they had done number one the rest would have been redundant. What else would you have done?

1) Research. Your existing customers are your best source of information. Talk to them, find out what they are looking for and match attributes to their requirements for value. If SIA had talked to its premium passengers and its own government departments, it would have realised that the market could not support the suites product.
2) Mass market branding with a focus on the 4 Ps is no longer effective. Brands today are built on relationships, access, personalisation and relevance.
3) SIA should have focussed on developing more profitable relationships, not a more profitable product. Brands evolve when companies start buying for customers instead of selling to them.
4) Branding is an organisational not a departmental responsibility. And the organisation is the responsibility of the CEO. To expect a passenger to pay a 50% premium over the price of a first class ticket and not offer a limousine service on the ground when all competitors offer it to first class passengers shows a real lack of judgement.
5) Retention is key to brand building. Companies no longer sell a product, customers buy a product. And once they’ve bought the product, companies should do everything possible to hang onto those customers.

SIA is a great brand. As I write this, I am sure SIA is working out what to do with its Suites. If SIA aims to meet customer requirements for emotional, economic and experiential value, then the airline will bounce back stronger and better for the experience and the Suites can be written off as a victim of the recession. If they don’t the suites may become yet another branding blunder.

Automation is a tool, not a solution

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In the mass economy that started before the second world war and ran until the start of the customer economy circa mid nineties, branding was a less complicated process. Consumers had little choice or knowledge and as a result would make brand decisions based on corporate promises or claims. Consumers needs were relatively simple and once they used a brand and if they were happy with that brand, they would remain loyal to the brand.

We’ve come a long way since then and branding has become a lot more complicated. As competition increased, companies tried to compete, often by slashing prices that ruined quality or making false claims about product capabilities. Advertising led campaigns focussed on aquisition and fed up consumers fled to the competition and the process continued.

A core element of brand building today requires brands to engage with customers to ensure a thorough understanding of the customer’s requirements for value and then matching the attributes of the product to those requirements for value. Once a customer is acquired, the process of continuous engagement continues through two way communication. The ultimate goal is to retain customers in order for the company to up or cross sell to them in the future. The icing on the cake is to turn them into brand ambassadors.

Up until recently, mobile service providers in Malaysia didn’t have to worry about subscribers leaving because they were able to create a number of road blocks to ensure the process of switching providers was too complicated. Even the recent implementation of number portability still punishes consumers which is why the response has been lukewarm.

I’ve been with my mobile provider, Celcom for at least 10 years and have put up with poor service, repeated dropped calls, confusing billing, lack of interest or understanding of my needs, inflexibility and non existent customer engagement for the majority of that decade. During a recent trip to Singapore I was checking email on a regular basis and have just been hit with an astronomical bill due to my usage of the data roaming service. I am not complaining about the massive hike in my bill because the reality is I should have checked the fees before using the service. (Having said that, I have done this in the past and not received such a large bill. Furthermore, a brief warning before usage would have been helpful).

But I am complaining about the fact that, after 10 years as a customer, Celcom sends me one text message warning me that I have passed my credit limit and then cuts my line without any consideration for my payment history or my time as a customer. This is even more irksome as my October bill is not actually due till 16/11. Despite this, and no doubt wary of the reputation of Celcom, my efficient pa had, yesterday instructed our despatch to pay the bill today, 11/11, five days before it is due. The balance is from my November bill and is not due till around the same time in December.

I’m also compaining about the company’s use of automation. If I try to make a call to my provider, using my handphone I am transferred to a machine that gives me some instructions that result in me receiving a text message stating the details of my overdue amount including dates due. That’s useful information. But it doesn’t give me an opportunity to pay the overdue amount or discuss the situation to someone. So Celcom is saying to me, “Your payment is overdue, you are barred from using your phone. We know you run a business but we don’t care. We know that some of you use your phone to go online and now you can’t, tough. In fact, we don’t want to help you or have anything to do with you until you settle your outstanding bill.”

So here are some suggestions for Celcom that brands in other sectors can also benefit from:

1) All customers are not created equal. Don’t treat those with a good payment record the same way as you treat those with a bad payment record.

2) Similarly, most customers are good people. If someone is late with their payment, don’t automatically assume they are a criminal. Find out what the problem is and see how you can make it better.

4) You collect a lot of data on your customers and their usage patterns. Use that data to form a relationship with those customers in the form of better service delivery.

5) Branding today is about engagement. Take the time to engage with your customers. Communicate with your customers in person.

6) Automation is a tool, it’s not a solution.

7) Just because you have acquired a customer, doesn’t mean you own them and don’t have to do anything to keep them.

8) You are not the only company doing what you do in the country.

9) At least give your customers the impression you are grateful for their business.

10) Everything you offer can be duplicated by other service providers, except the relationship you have with your customers.

Feel free to submit any recommendations to improve the Celcom brand experience.

Pitching for a bank name change in Malaysia

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Last Friday we were pitching against 4 advertising agencies to a Malaysian bank. Essentially, the brief was for a name change and to create awareness of the name change in Malaysia. We were invited to pitch despite being a data driven brand consultancy. In fact I had personally discussed this fact with one of the corporate communications representatives at the bank.

He told me that if we went into the traditional FusionBrand pitch (We had presented to them 12 months ago) we would not get very far however, if we presented a ‘traditional re-brand’ pitch and suggest the FusionBrand approach for after the name change then we might generate some interest.

So, much to my chagrin, we pitched in the traditional way and suggested that this was only half the battle and what the bank also needed once the population was aware of the new name was a strategy to get prospects and customers into the branches and to buy product(s) and so on.

As my colleagues presented, I was imagining how the other agencies would make promises based on their new “positioning” of the bank.

I found myself thinking that what sort of a position could an agency offer the bank that would make them stand out from all the other banks? What position would make consumers cast aside their ingrained perceptions (not very good) of the bank? How would a new positioning strategy encourage prospects to walk into branches? And once they had walked into those branches, how well preparred would the staff be to sell to them?

I already knew that one of our competitors was a global agency but because they are very busy they were outsourcing the creative element so it was unlikely (though not impossible) that they would have the best talent in the market working on the creative.

And then I thought how could the bank make inroads into existing markets using the same type of ‘positioning strategy’ that all the other banks are using? Sure, the tactics might be different, then again perhaps not, but the positioning strategy, of finding a space in the consumers mind would be the same.

I also thought of how tumultuous the world is at the moment and how any positioning ‘strategy’ that had been implemented before the global economic crisis would be a worthless (and expensive) waste of money now because the world is a different place compared to even a year ago. What if something similar were to happen in the next 6 months, as this bank’s positioning ‘strategy’ was implemented? Would they too waste their valuable resources?

I also thought about my own issues with my bank and how, despite numerous negative experiences over the last 10 years, I was still with them. And yet during that time, I’ve seen so many ‘re-brands’ of banks or financial institutions, RHB, CIMB, Bank Islam, etc, all of them used positioning to influence me and hope that I would become a client (I didn’t and I wonder how many did. I certainly don’t know anyone who has changed their bank in the last 5 years).

It made me realize that the FusionBrand approach, where we use customised research to deliver actionable data, operational excellence as the foundations for the brand strategy, brand planning to eradicate the hope mentality, and segment specific communications that resonate with those segments alone and meet the economic, experiential and emotional needs of customers and prospects in those segments. Metrics and measurement that ensures valuable marketing resources are not wasted are what is required to build a brand in the customer economy of today.

The issue of course, is whether the bank knows this! I will let you know how we get on!