The Hindu Business Line : A bank by any other name…

Take a short walk through the banking district here in South Mumbai, if possible on a weekend when the offices are closed, and there is a familiar scene outside several bank branches and offices. One that is becoming a regular feature of my weekend trips to the area these days.

There is a supervisor overseeing while two or three scrawny labourers heave and tug and push up a brand new signboard. On the ground a few feet away lies an old, rusting, fading board that, just moments ago, adorned the same space.

Flavour of the season

As is the flavour of the season, yet another old, stodgy, possibly PSU bank is undergoing a high-profile, and undoubtedly expensive, re-branding programme. Not content with putting out ATMs, initiating Web banking and even spiffy mobile banking platforms, PSU banks have now realised that long-term success lies in shedding their old boring personas and coming up with a snazzy logo, dynamic new caption and a PR campaign that burns rupees like firewood.

Yet, like a recent bank proclaimed, a little oddly as part of its rebranding campaign, often nothing changes but the name.

Historically, and globally, re-branding is a little bit of a dicey business.

Let’s face it. Most people working in a company, or those who have had poor experiences with companies, know that in reality the brand has little to do with what is wrong with the company in the first place.

Sure, the right brand and brand presentation can go a long way in helping a firm kick off things. Perhaps acquire a good crop of customers to start with. Even create a great position in the market.

Elaborate rebranding

So what would you do if you were an old-world bank struggling to keep up with the cool new boys with their Internet banking, feature-loaded credit cards, shiny glass and steel branches, snappy customer service and cool TV ads?

Clean up your act maybe? Get some great products out there? Get those branches spic and span? Huh? Huh?

Of course not! How realistic would that be?

Instead, we would be led to believe, the solution lies in an elaborate rebranding exercise. Time to call those international consultants, arrange for those brainstorming sessions and whip up a few focus groups. And a few months later we must unveil a snazzy, new logo and a customer-centric tag line peppered with words like you, us, people, community, care, change, relationship, we, together, smile and clever puns with bank.

The logo is nothing short of Picasso-esque. So much so that during the Press Conference, the CEO struggles to hold a straight face while he explains how the pink symbolises profit and the yellow cloud represents determination in the face of adversity. And the blue, obviously, stands for “our wonderful employees”.

The UK experience

In 2003 Abbey National Bank of UK decided to “turn banking on its head”. (I quote the then CEO verbatim here.) They dropped the ‘National’, dropped the capital A, threw in some soft, oh so eclectic, pastel colours and re-modelled all the branches to look like, I believe, mid-market lounge bar type places.

Unfortunately the customer experience remained exactly the same. There were rumours of new values and systems. But no one told the poor Abbey National staff in their cotton candy coloured offices.

Two years, and £11 million in re-branding costs later, the bank declared a 20 per cent drop in profits and lost market share. It was then acquired by Grupo Santander of Spain.

They then spent 8 million on re-rebranding Abbey. Many branches were still adopting the first re-branding when the second fresh set of designs came through.

So perhaps it takes more than jazz and pizzazz to get competitive.

All those banks now have our attention. What are they going to do with it? Will we see some great new products and improved customer service? Will they take the game to the new kids on the block?

One thing’s for sure: you can bank on some interesting developments in the days to come!

(The writer, an alumnus of IIM-A, was a management consultant before quitting to work as a freelance writer, author and general handyman. He blogs at www.whatay.com)

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