Brewin Dolphin
"Brewin Dolphin is a business with a great story to tell. Headmint helped our people crystalise our views and brought really valuable insights to how we present ourselves. This work has been a foundation stone, not just for our marketing communications, but to our whole approach to serving our existing clients and appealing to new markets."
Philip Browne, Group Marketing Director
A well-kept secret
Brewin Dolphin is the UK's largest, independent private client investment company, established in 1762 and managing funds in excess of £21 billion. Until recently, it has been a very large company with a very low profile, often relying on acquisition or personal recommendation for growth.
Operating under 4 different trading names - Brewin Dolphin, Hill Osborne, Wise Speke and Bell Lawrie - the project to launch Brewin Dolphin as a consumer-facing brand was initiated by the new marketing director, Philip Browne, in May 2007, as a fundamental component of company's growth plans for the wealth management market; a market with huge potential for the right brand to take a substantial leap in market share.
Creative consulting
Headmint were asked to create a compelling, competitive and focused brand story for people who care about what happens to their money. So, to fully understand what it was that made the Brewin Dolphin way of doing business so competitive and desirable for people with money to invest, it was necessary to involve a lot of stakeholders, both internal and external. It was critical for such a ‘people-orientated' business that this story was built from the inside out.
As part of developing a category-breaking approach, Headmint encouraged Brewin Dolphin to look at themselves in new ways, bringing an external perspective to challenge the status quo, and ultimately helping to create focus and consensus around who they are and what they stand for. This learning was then translated into a brand story, one that could be celebrated on the inside and talked about on the outside.
Galvanised for success
Once the story was clear, Headmint encapsulated it in a Brand Bible for Brewin Dolphin:
- Outlining the future direction for the development of everything that is done at Brewin Dolphin.
- Defining what makes Brewin Dolphin unique and sets out to explain the brand as it will be understood, relative to others in the marketplace
- Describing the role for the brand in existing and desired customer's lives
- Expressing what Brewin Dolphin stands for in clear, concise and simple language
The Brand Bible helped to define and create advocacy for what Brewin Dolphin stands for, rooted in the truth that is both relevant to existing clients and authentic to Brewin Dolphin, what they are and where they have come from.
The purpose of the Brand Bible is to help the business accelerate growth, by assisting in:
- Orientating the internal parts of the business around a common idea, getting everyone all on the same page, (working for the company as a whole and for the individuals in the business)
- Providing the glue that makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts
- Acting as a creative filter for future brand development (e.g. client literature and communication, the products, the way Brewin Dolphin investment managers behave with their clients)
- Forming the backbone for how the company talks to third parties and friends of the Brewin Dolphin brand
Each part of this Brand Bible addresses a particular aspect of understanding about who the company is, and why they are more desirable, distinctive and competitive to clients of the future. It offers a platform to go beyond stockbroking.
The Brand Bible led to a universal communications brief, used in the selection of communication partners for a new visual identity and all future communications.
The new corporate identity - ‘individually crafted investment solutions' - on company brochures.
The new identity, designed to reflect the company's stature, heritage and its distinctive, personal way of building client relationships and portfolios, is based around the line - ‘individually crafted investment solutions' - encapsulating the absolute values at the heart of the brand. In April 2008, the new identity was fully implemented across all 40 Brewin Dolphin offices in the UK and Channel Islands.
In March 2009, after nearly 250 years, Brewin Dolphin became the company's single unified brand.
Telling the story
The business opportunity was to attract and retain new customers to what is already a highly successful and valued brand, (for those who know). In order to support the strategy, Brewin's investment managers were facilitated in telling stories that supported these important brand elements - stories that describe what makes Brewin Dolphin so special: stories about the levels of service and the amount of trust that clients have in investment managers.
In mid-2009, Brewin Dolphin launched their first ever national advertising campaign, which simply brings these stories to life.
The communication task was to increase consideration of Brewin Dolphin as a financial partner, amongst those who have never heard of them, by making potential clients aware of the brand's point of view on money management and investing.
The brand essence, the thought that sums up what the Brewin Dolphin brand is all about, is "Applied Integrity". Integrity is at the core of the Brewin Dolphin way of doing things, but it is its application that makes the brand different. The company, because of its integrity, has a point of view about how an individual's money should be managed, which is often at odds with the prevailing industry view.
The Brewin Dolphin proposition is:
"MONEY MANAGEMENT: THE WAY IT SHOULD BE"
This is supported by the functional benefit that people feel they have peace of mind through stress-free investing, controlled risk and a sense of predictability, with no nasty financial surprises and the emotional benefit that people feel that Brewin Dolphin is where the "smart money goes"; it's a choice well-made.
In terms of brand personality, the Brewin Dolphin brand does not lead from a presumed position of power or scale, even though it has a lot of it (a common approach in the financial world), but prefers to coach people in their own understanding of their needs and the investment approach that will suit.
The Brewin Dolphin brand is:
Understated and discrete, yet authoritative and passionate about the right way to do things
Highly respectful
Quite like John Lewis/Waitrose really
The press campaign ran in late 2009 and early 2010 in the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times with some key regional titles. Early tracking results confirm that of those target customers (with assets to invest of £500,000+), who have heard of Brewin Dolphin, consideration of the company as their first choice, or one of their first choices when considering an Investment Manager, have increased by 80%.
Read more about creating trust in Financial Services - In Brands We Trust. This article was authored by Headmint consultants and is reproduced with the permission of ARGENT magazine.