Beyond the Collateral Archives: Brand Management
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October 20, 2008
SwanDog Publishes The World Has Changed (Part 1)
SwanDog Strategic Marketing today published “The World Has Changed (Part 1),” a 12-page whitepaper available to be downloaded from www.swandog.com. It includes recommendations on how mutual fund companies, other investment managers and broker-dealers can reposition themselves.
In the whitepaper, Dave Swanson, SwanDog’s founder and managing principal, is critical of investment management Web site updates and encourages marketers to commit to more timely communicating by adopting a “newsroom mentality.” Investment companies that have deferred investor communications to financial advisors need to use frequency, education and transparency to re-open the dialogue, we believe. Marketing communications, including imagery, need to be reworked to represent the empathy that today’s markets call for. Other recommendations relate to redefining the brand of the financial advisor and the prospects for large and small asset management brands.
The investment management industry is the business we come from and we now serve. Some of what we’re recommending is counterintuitive to legacy marketing, but we believe in marketing organizations’ ability to step it up and lead their firms’ efforts in bolstering investor confidence. There is unprecedented opportunity for those who do.
To download a copy of “The World Has Changed (Part 1),” go to www.swandog.com. The whitepaper is the first in a series of reports.
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September 15, 2007
What Brand Management Is and Isn’t
It’s not the advertising. It’s not a positioning statement. It’s not a tag line. Too many financial service firms don’t understand this. When we talk to firms regarding their “brand,” too often they immediately refer to their advertising or their firm’s positioning statement. They think that is where their brand resides, and that brand management is in the hands of the keeper/enforcer of the brand standards manual.
What too many fail to recognize is that a brand resides in the collective perceptions of their clients’ minds. It is the firm’s customers’ and prospects’ collective perceptions — of their products, their literature, their value-added programs, the sales reps who call on them, the phone reps who answers their calls–that all leave a lasting impression. This amalgamation of impressions leaves a strong overall perception of the firm. These perceptions are the firm’s real brand in the customers’ eyes, regardless of how close they match the positioning statement. And, once established, these perceptions are hard to change.
