The Story

I’m a big fan of metaphors and analogies—probably to the point where some of my team members, clients and partners get tired of hearing me talk about “building the foundation before you can put up the wallpaper in the bathroom,” and other of my little gems.

On his blog The Financial Brand, Jeffry Pilcher threw out a cool metaphor involving the game show Wheel of Fortune. It was good enough that I wanted to share it with you, if you haven’t seen it already, go here.

We always ask our clients an important, simple question (which we blatantly stole from our friend Joe Sullivan at Market Insights), which is “describe your brand without using the words ‘people,’ ’service’ or ‘community.’” This gets at the heart of what Jeffry is pointing out.

Having great people, nice service and commitment to community are all great attributes—and ones that you should foster and value. But that can’t be all you got, folks. That alone is not enough…it is not interesting or unique enough. You’ve got to have a more distinct and separate position. Something that is, as we call it, “ownable.” People, service and community are not ownable.

You can’t win with STRNLE alone. Although good letters, you need more. Your bank or credit union’s brand is no different.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Bank Branding, Credit Union Branding, Bank Marketing, Branding, Credit Union Marketing, Corporate branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.