Westpac proves that ‘a brand is what a brand does’
By Wayde Bull, Planning Director at Principals.
The executive team at Westpac must be wishing for Christmas to come a little early this year, as the bank remains doggedly out of favour with its customers, politicians and the community at large, for aggressively hiking its mortgage interest rates last week.
While we may become accustomed to divergent bank responses to future shifts in official rates, competitiors have clearly relished the opportunity to isolate Westpac this time around and exploit an apparent hollowness in their customer service rhetoric.
Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly states that she wants customers to be delighted by the experience of dealing with Westpac. Are Kelly’s customers surprised by Westpac’s recent actions? Certainly. Delighted? Surely not.
Of course, Westpac’s current uncomfortable isolation on interest rates is likely to pass. And the next official rate rise may see a different bank on the nose with its customers, as they assert an equivalent right to recover the true costs of their funding.
But Westpac’s present discomfort serves to demonstrate a timeless truth about brand building – that a brand’s reputation is primarily shaped by what a business does rather than what it claims. That there needs to be an authentic – and consistent – alignment between what a business promises and what it tangibly delivers, everyday.
This is hardly an original thought, as we were all brought up to recognise that our actions speak louder than our words. Though it’s surely an old idea with fresh relevance for marketers, who must build brands today with far less reliance upon 30 second claims, reliably engrained through prime-time repetition – and far more reliance upon the delivery of memorable branded experiences that consumers are willing to share with others.
The former global CEO of Vodafone Arun Sarin is thought to have coined the phrase “A brand is what a brand does” that perfectly captures the spirit of authentic reputation building – to view brands more as verbs than as adjectives – and as vehicles to demonstrate how a business is better through the concrete things that it does.
As 2009 draws to a close, what local brands might we point to, that have succeeded in standing out through their concrete actions this year?
- The new online insurer www.youi.com.au helps customers secure better value insurance by asking more specific questions at the outset of the relationship, enabling a more accurate pricing of the risk. A great example of a service brand that engages its customers in an intelligent, adult-to-adult way, to deliver mutual benefit.
- IAG’s NRMA and SGIO brands continue to breathe fresh life into their quirky ‘Unworry’ brand idea through a new initiative to reward drivers of 69 environmentally friendly, ‘Unthirsty’ vehicles. A business putting its money where its mouth is, to support community action on climate change.
- Tiger, the Thai premium beer, seeks to engage young Australians in a different vision of Asia through experiential art events that showcase works by emerging Asian artists, developed to provocative briefs. Encouraging consumers to think differently about their brand by involving them in a 3-dimensional way.
- The broadband challenger iiNet has tangibly differentiated its ADSL wire into our homes by creating BoB, a high design phone and wireless appliance, that demonstrates the power of cool design to differentiate dull, commodity-like services.
- The Vancouver-born sportswear retailer Lululemon Athletica treats its Australian stores as gathering places for like minds. It holds regular feel good sessions in-store that draw together the retail team, customers and fitness and well-being experts from the local area into shared conversation, education and exercise.
Finally, for any brand managers inspired – or incited – into action by events in Copenhagen this week, it’s worth a visit to the UK Carbon Trust’s website www.decarbonisingthebrand.com for guidance on how to build brand advantage through green activism.
First published on AFR (www.afr.com) - 10th December 2009
