Financial marketing

What is Brand Engineering?

4th April 2022

Great financial services branding doesn’t happen by accident. It requires precision assembly with all of the critical components working together harmoniously within a proven framework.

That’s why we call the practice of planning, designing, constructing and maintaining a company’s brand infrastructure, Brand Engineering.

At Financial Marketing, we have developed a rigorous process for time-poor management teams to create their brand foundations in just one day.

The five components of a compelling brand
We have identified five key attributes (5Rs) shared by top quartile brands which we use to validate all of our branding interventions for clients:

• Relevant – The appropriateness of brand ‘fit’ to stakeholder wants and needs.

• Remarkable – The distinctiveness of the brand as seen through the customer’s lens.

• Resilient – The ability of the brand to withstand external pressures in a rapidly changing world.

• Reputational – The level of trust, respect and esteem gained by a relationship with the brand.

• Real – The authenticity of the brand promise as it is lived through the customer experience.

A framework for success
Our proven One Day Brand Workshop process is a systematic approach that enables financial services organisations to discover, define, develop and deploy their irresistible brand vision within an actionable framework:

DISCOVER

Positioning – Discovering where your offering currently stands in relation to your competitors.

Personas – Describing your ideal target audiences, their key drivers and behaviours.

DEFINE

Promise – Distilling your organisation’s core essence, the soul of your business and the central promise at the heart of your brand.

Pillars – Defining the values that will shape your business culture and guide the behaviours of your team.

DEVELOP

Propositions – Determining the measurable and demonstrable promise of value to be delivered to your customer, linked to your core essence.

Personality – Developing the human characteristics of your brand, from the brand vocabulary to tone of voice.

DEPLOY

Proof – Detecting sources of evidence that endorse and underpin your authentic brand.

Pitch – Delivering a concise and compelling introduction that sparks meaningful business conversations.

Plan – Documenting the workshop outputs in an actionable Brand Blueprint within 48 hours, validated against the 5Rs of a perfectly balanced brand (Relevant, Remarkable, Resilient, Reputational and Real).

A precision-engineered brand is a clear, confident and compelling brand that makes your marketing meaningful. It allows you to connect powerfully with your customers. It acts as a rallying cry to your employees. And it is aligned perfectly with your vision.

Ultimately, it will enable your business to stand out, giving you a distinctive competitive edge that will cut through the clutter in an increasingly crowded market.