Joseph Baladi: Branding for Financial Services - Speakers Connect | Asia's Leading Speakers Bureau for Virtual and Live Events

Joseph Baladi examines the hurdles financial services face for their brand building – and the keyword is “Purpose”.

A lot of people argue that whilst it is all good and fine to have a reason to exist (the generic definition of purpose) most, if not all, customers are ultimately more interested in results – that the real purpose of financial companies must, therefore, be numbers driven and profit-centred. This argument appears to be so self-evident that most financial brands do exactly that: they talk almost exclusively about return on investment. What they fail to recognize is how their brands all but ultimately degenerate into commodities in the process.

A big part of the reason financial brand owners fall into this trap is that they interpret the purpose of purpose too narrowly. They think in linear terms believing that almost nothing can displace the basic expectation customers have of their brands. So whilst some may make genuine efforts to explore different purposes and positionings, they almost always regress and go back to promising their customers what they believe is the only benefit that matters to them. A more lateral thinking approach – pretty much like looking at something from a physically different location – would likely reveal more possibilities.

Login