A new authentic voice for Hungarian banking
Budapest Bank, GE Money’s Hungarian member, has recently launched their new brand, with strategy, identity and a brand engagement programme.
When we met Budapest Bank, their main asset was a tradition of product excellence, however, this major strength was not working as hard as it could in the market. Instead of standing for a distinctive worldview, it came across as a functional and tactical stance, focused on short term offers.
We facilitated a brand strategy process that bloomed into an ambitious branding programme that has already made a significant impact on Budapest Bank’s business. An impact that became apparent even before the launch of the identity.
Unlike many projects where a lot of research needs to be carried out, when we started working with Budapest Bank they already had mountains of high-quality research about the perception and performance of their brand and competitor brands in the market. Our task was to distil meaning from this content and develop new insights. A thorough brand and market audit, combined with a series of internal workshops, painted a fascinating picture.
We discovered that while major banks in Hungary were making many attempts at emotional positioning, they were missing the mark. The findings were very consistent: no bank clearly owned any truly differentiating position in the market. Hungarian customers were cynical about banking and didn’t see a lot of difference between players – this was a sign of a market ready for a bold new positioning.
Uri Baruchin, the consultant leading the project tells: “All the competition were using similar global consumer banking trends, promoting them using an over-emotional communication style that was popular with western banking brands around the turn of the millennium. The Hungarian audience, who are understandably sensitive to propaganda, largely rejected these attempts. Even in cases where relevant and credible claims were being made, all banks in the market failed to differentiate.”
While assessing the strategic situation, we discovered people’s perception of their banking experiences to be generally poor, and their expectations very low – customers simply didn’t think banks stand for anything, only switched a bank on extreme negatives and focused on their fears or anger, depending on their power as customers. The only way this rift could be mended was with a leader that empathised with the pain and attacked the challenges of modern banking from a different angle.
“The market had slipped into a market plot we call ‘the generic loop trap’” says Uri, “A category is largely generic, and on discovering that, brands turn to customers for answers. However, in these situations, customers only speak about their generic experiences, so any vision or ‘new’ concept based on this input, mistakenly labelled as ‘customer insight’, manifests as a generic result. Back to square one.”
We realised only Budapest Bank itself could define how things can be different. The new brand strategy we defined for Budapest Bank created a new connection between their heritage of product innovation and what it actually stood for. This newfound ideology created a new common ground between the brand and the worldview of their customers. The result was a call to change – no-nonsense banking, with a brand that gets straight to the point. The new ‘no-nonsense’ vision galvanised senior management and they began to use the brand as a major tool for change in key initiatives and in guiding the cultural norms for the company.
Even before the new brand identity was launched, a campaign based on the new brand narrative quickly became one of the most loved and successful ads in recent market history. When the brand identity was finally launched, it served as a signal of Budapest Bank embarking on a new journey.
The change goes much deeper than communications: a brand engagement programme, facilitated by our consultants, rallied employees behind the new cause. This approach continuously instigates both cross-organisational and grassroots change initiatives, all focused on the new commitment, and the process creates substance behind the bold exclamations of the new positioning.
“While the positioning addresses a need in the market, it also relates to competencies held within the bank around product innovation.” Says Gill Garner, who led the brand engagement programme “However, we discovered that change within the culture and operations of the bank needs to happen before such a consumer-centric position can be attained. The bank placed product development at the core of operations. While Budapest Bank must rely on this strength, customer needs must be brought from the periphery into the centre in order to inform which products are selected for the pipeline, the way in which they are delivered in the market through service initiatives and the way in which they are communicated.”
Andrea Szabó, CMO for Budapest Bank-GE Money Bank, says: “Brandinstinct’s approach to brand building not only delivered a great and relevant new brand concept to Budapest Bank-GE Money Bank, but their facilitation was also fundamental to the internal approval and alignment process. With their help, 12 months after kicking off the work we have a new communication strategy that delivered positive business impact and improved brand strength significantly, our customer touch points are harmonized to our new brand promise and most importantly our organisation is aligned to delivering what we promise to our customers.”
These are very exciting times for Budapest Bank and we enjoy our continuing work with them very much. We’re currently working on their extensive credit card portfolio.
And by the way, we’re really pleased with how the ‘no nonsense’ brand strategy comes through in the launch advert, poking fun of the importance of the new identity. You can watch it below.
