Australia’s Banks and Telstra – A real need to revisit their Brands
Strategic branding should precede marketing; it is the foundation of any organisation – its DNA. Branding sets the path and base for future marketing strategies and tactics. It is strategic whilst marketing is often very tactical and promotion based.
Strategic branding involves differentiating your business, product and/or service in the most compelling and significant way possible. Handled correctly, this involves an ‘inside-out’ approach, first by internally determining the company’s organisational values (what is valued, how staff conduct themselves). These are powerful enablers of your brand.
From an external perspective, it is very important to invest time and thinking into what you consider the organisation’s brand actually stands for (i.e. Brand Pillars) as understood by your customers and wider stakeholder groups including the investment market and general community. Simply put, it is determining what you are about. A recent example of deviation from the brand path is Telstra’s development and introduction of T-Box technology. According to a recent AFR article on June 24th 2010, “Telstra’s move into internet TV with the launch of T-Box digital video recorder was doomed to fail because Telstra are not a media company; they are an old-fashioned, slow-moving telecommunications company.” This is a classic case in point of the need to decide what you stand for, and then executing the strategy effectively. Given the regular customer flack Telstra receives for their inability to service and understand their customer’s expectations, it would be worthwhile for senior executives to take some time out to re-address their brand and its foundations going forward.
Question Telstra staff as to what they believe to be their organisation’s inherent competitive advantage (unique differentiation from competitors) or more importantly, what their brand stands for? Might we get back somewhat similar responses from people across the entire organisation?
Another good example of a lack of differentiation can be found in any of Australia’s banks. Again AFR noted that “Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has become the second big bank in less than four months to overhaul its advertising strategy in response to fierce competition in key banking categories”. We are the first people to raise our hands to tell them advertising and marketing will not cut it, especially if their organisation has not invested in its differentiation and internal culture. Without this, CBA runs the real risk of producing more of the same and customers will tune out. The vicious circle continues with banks throwing even more money at advertising to gain market share. Can anyone spot the differentiation?
Credit must, however, go to the ANZ. To complement its brand refresh strategy, it has devoted considerable time, effort and resources to engage its front staff to deliver on customer promises. Pleasingly, its advertising promises appear to complement the branch experience from a customer standpoint.
One danger of not having an established brand (or at least regularly reviewing it) is that the marketing messages produced may not be reflective of the brand (strategically aligned with where the organisation is heading). Banks are sitting duck examples of introducing floundering communications to counteract competition. This costs inordinate amounts of marketing and advertising dollars as they try to build some sort of brand differentiation and meaning to a customer. They spend heavily with advertising agencies that put out convoluted messages seeking differentiation in a real and relevant way to customers. These customers, however, have already been bombarded with advertising messages and marketing, much of it neither strategically nor commercially-minded, and it is exactly this style of advertising/marketing which is the culprit behind people’s understanding of Brand equating to advertising and logos.