Best B2B brand awareness campaign
Winner: Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets
Campaign: Launching the Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets brand
The objectives of the campaign, its metrics and budget were all available to the judges of the B2B Marketing Awards and the campaign was assessed accordingly. Certain aspects of the campaign have been considered too commercially sensitive to be published in their entirety.
Corporate Markets is the corporate banking arm of the Lloyds TSB group, and provides a financial and advisory service which also offers specialist products. As CBI/Real Finance bank of the year for three years running, Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets has established a reputation for leading the markets in relationship management and service quality. Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets provides relationship banking and a full range of products and services to businesses, ranging from traditional lending to specialised finance and risk management solutions for businesses with a turnover of more than £2 million.
A number of Lloyds TSB business units operated in the corporate marketplace but the existing brands lacked coordination. They conveyed a confusing mix of creative styles and messages which resulted in lower awareness and consideration among non customers, particularly when it came to understanding the units’ specialist capabilities. Customers of Lloyds TSB believed that the bank focused more on the retail markets and so tended to invest business finance with competitors.
In 2006 the position was reviewed with the aim of developing a single brand covering all the Lloyds TSB business units. Research before the campaign showed that the business units were not working as a unified team and the staff did not understand the customer promise. Although the customers considered Lloyds TSB to be ‘nice’ they also thought the bank unambitious, were not really aware of what the different units offered and were confused by the publications.
Options were developed to differentiate and raise awareness and consideration for Lloyds TSB in the corporate marketplace. They included developing a single engaging brand with consistent visual identity, agreeing a core set of business capability messages and launching the brand through an integrated marketing campaign. The propositions were then tested with 23 key internal business stakeholders, 35 staff across six regions and 60 customers and non-customers.
The findings were fundamental to provide the basis of the integrated campaign, which also required an important element of internal education. As a result, we finally narrowed down the various options leading to a single brand DNA:
– Business brand name – Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets
– Brand proposition – trusted partners anticipate and deliver the best financial solutions for you
– Band capabilities – corporate banking, debt capital markets, structured finance and financial markets.
Working with Rainey Kelly and Zenith Optimedia, Lloyds TSB developed a launch campaign to increase awareness and consideration and position the corporate bank as forward thinking and proactive.
The campaign included four weeks of advertising activity in the national press to build overall markets awareness and credibility of the new core brand name the recent awards of CBI Bank of the Year. Adverts appeared in broadsheets such as The Times, Daily Telegraph and FT. More targeted advertising aimed at key audiences appeared for six weeks in titles such as Treasurer, Real Finance and Accountancy Age. This time the ads concentrated on Lloyds TSB specialist finance capabilities and the strength of its relationship managers with the advertising messages focusing on specific readership needs according to each title.
Outdoor advertising consisted of a four-week campaign at London’s Waterloo underground station and other key city centre locations using a reveal creative technique which highlighted specialist capabilities and award wins. Outside London three regional launch events were aimed at 100 regional business leaders. Based on the new brand proposition they had the theme of ‘looking ahead’ and anticipating customer needs.
Each event featured:
– A customer panel looking ahead to the general business markets in the coming year
– Lloyds TSB’s chief economist, looking ahead to the economic future
– The BBC’s Andrew Marr looking ahead to the world’s political future.
A direct mail campaign targeted 1000 mid-markets prospects demonstrating strength in relationship manager the ability to anticipate their needs. The first 100 users had the chance to win an iPod Nano and a link was provided to the bank’s new podcast service Bizcast. Anthony Hilton and Quentin Cooper featured alongside Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets’ chief economist and head of syndicated loans. Also online, the Corporate Markets’ website was rebranded and banner advertising introduced. Visitors had to register their details and so enabled Lloyd’s TSB to build a prospect database.
The new brand launch campaign was highly successful as 10 per cent of the target markets recall the campaign while awareness among non-customers has increased to 79 per cent. There were also significant increases in awareness of Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets’ specialist capabilities and key messages.