International bank

An international bank with around 18 million customers is present in twelve countries. As a publicly traded bank, it pursues ambitious growth targets in all countries. However, these ambitions were hampered by unclear brand positioning and value sets. The bank recognized that it needed to harmonize the different values with a brand strategy and develop a clear and attractive positioning.

The bank has many areas of excellence. These should be used to further develop its potential and strengthen its value proposition for customers in all countries.

New regulatory requirements, uncertainties in the financial and capital markets, and fierce competition made it clear to our client that a comprehensive brand strategy was needed that would apply to all subsidiary banks and the various customer segments (such as private customers, corporate customers, and capital markets).

The major challenge here was that this brand strategy had to be finely tuned to the customer needs of each country, accepted, and implemented.

Using internal brand data, hypothesis-based market research, and our brand strategy methodology, we first strengthened the foundation. This consists of specific brand core values and clear market positioning for each customer segment in selected pilot markets.

Based on this, we developed an overarching brand strategy that succeeded in expressing the bank's outstanding performance and translating it into a clear brand vision and positioning. BrandTrust then adapted these elements to the cultural and customer-specific characteristics of the twelve countries.

In this way, the bank found a common denominator for all – while still taking into account the different values and customer perceptions of the countries. The brand strategy was successfully implemented – in the sense of a common corporate philosophy and at the same time specific to each country.

The new brand strategy greatly simplified coordination between the various markets, resulting in consistent communication. The significantly higher efficiency is reflected in the balance sheet figures: since then, total assets and net income have been rising.

Today, our client wins people over with an attractive and credible value proposition that can be experienced in all twelve countries. Together with the updated brand style, reputation and trust are further strengthened. We have preserved the bank's old foundation, but at the same time used it for something new. In this way, we have significantly increased the bank's differentiation from established competitors and new FinTech players.