Irina Lobanova
National agency of financial research, Leader of banking sector research department
There could be numerous reasons for a bank to start thinking of the rebranding and those depend on the peculiarities of the strategy of finance-crediting organization and its record of presence in the market. The fact that it really is in the need of it may be easily exposed while assessing the bank’s current image value among the customers.
For many banks which have had existed in the market for more than 10 years, the most topical stimulus for the change of its outer image will serve its common discrepancy to the realities of the present day. Whatever was considered as stylish, contemporary and timely during the 90-ies or the so-called “point zero” years can now be detected as hopelessly outdated. Usually, when the customers describe such a brand name, they recollect banks’ imaging at the dawn of the consolidation of the financial system in Russia and compare it with the state-owned establishments of the old type. As a warning “whistleblower” for the mentioned could serve the decrease of the quota of young and medium generations within the general mass of the clientele.
Very often the banks are obliged to recourse to rebranding as to a means of starting from the “blank page” after experiencing several unsuccessful events, which finally become the cause of formation of a negative image. That is particularly characteristic of the retail banks, which are orientated toward the mass segment of the population.
One of the most significant occasions for rebranding serves not only its negative or the outdated image for correction and upgrading of which undertaking even some minor changes will be enough, but the absence of clearly established image of the brand in the customers’ consciousness. In case if the existing and potential clients do not realize, what their bank differs from another finance and credit organizations: - that fact could serve as an occasion for revision of not only its outer positioning, but also the strategy of the company as a whole and most probably starting from searching a new targeted audience.
|
Mikhail Semikov
Binbank, Marketing department director
Rebranding is a very complex and extremely costly process, especially for brands with already settled audience. There are several motives which can serve as an impulse for implementation of rebranding. First of all that’s the change of the targeted segment, its expansion or shifting towards another niche etc. Secondly: - the urgency of alteration of the image of the existing brand and attaching new characteristics and properties to it. Thirdly: - creation of an integrated brand within the framework of unification of different bank assets into a common one.
The input data for brand creation are considered a particular case for the second version, which in the future become a limitation for its further development (for example: regional designations in the titles of financial institutions, which bear federal ambitions).
|
Vladimir Morozov
Rosgosstrakh, Marketing department director
Banks initiate their rebranding procedures due to several reasons: upon running into the problem of loyalty of clients by thus trying to rehabilitate their compromised reputation in customers’ eyes, triggering processes of financial mergers and fusions or mastering new marketing niches. In each case the reasonability of rebranding is dependent on the specifics of the tasks emerging in front of the credit organization.
The major factor in efficient rebranding is its “stuffing”. It is necessary for the process not to be limited by the bank’s branch’s formal name and signboard color change, but by real support for practical innovations, new products, improvement of the quality of services, innovative technologies, which lead to simplification of collaboration of the client with the bank, etc.
|
