What is brand behavior? Simply put, brand behavior is how your brand interacts and reacts with real customers in the real marketplace. While your positioning statement may say one thing about your values and strengths, truly demonstrating them is another matter.
A missed opportunity
Picture this. You’re sitting at your desk flipping through a…
The cryptocurrency market, which was once considered inaccessible—or even suspect—is gradually finding its way into the mainstream of global commerce, thanks to consumer-friendly apps, celebrity endorsements, and viral trends. Cryptocurrencies are rapidly being integrated into traditional financial markets. In 2021 so far, venture capital firms have invested $17 billion in crypto projects…
Before institutional investors turn over millions — and sometimes billions — of dollars to an asset manager, they want to know how their money is going to be invested. It’s not a question of which equities or bonds or alternatives the manager prefers. That’s easy enough to determine by looking at their current portfolios. What…
It’s not always easy to figure out when a new brand direction is needed. For many companies, the brand they build in the early stages of their business can often stay in place for years – long after the organization has evolved beyond its original offering and strategy. Which means that, down the line, they…
Branding is an overlooked operational element when evaluating a target company and maximizing performance of a portfolio company. Yet it harbors the most leverage in optimizing marketing and sales, growing market share and increasing retention, and commanding price premiums.
Here’s why a focus on branding is crucial:
1. Strong branding increases profitability
A company…
Blue: the most common color in financial services. A look at fifty top financial services brands found almost half had blue logos and another seven had blue elements in their logos. We weren’t too surprised with this result: blue is actually a great color. As we examined in our last Color Series post, blue…
Each year, agencies and research firms publish the rankings of the world’s most valuable brands. More than an ego boost for the listed brands’ marketers, these valuations are important intangible assets, and they become especially pertinent during M&A activity. In fact, a study from Houlihan Lokey showed that among its sample, 70…
Trees are symbols of maturity and wisdom, of resilience and sturdiness. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that so many mutual funds choose to name themselves for them. As we see it, the sense of long-term security that tree names convey may be particularly appealing to people saving for retirement, exactly the…
Branding and Asset Management: Research Findings from desantisbreindel
How effective are asset managers in communicating a differentiated value proposition? What are the key drivers of the asset management brand? And what are the most effective channels for connecting with key audiences? These are some of the questions we set out to answer in the Brand…
According to the Harvard Business Review, “study after study puts the failure rate of mergers at somewhere between 70-90%.” More often than not, brand is not promoted or leveraged to provide unity, clarity and solidarity during this critical inflection point, yet brand can make all the difference between success and failure for the companies…
Much has been written about ‘key man’ risk — the danger for corporations that rely on one or a few individuals — and its impact on business value. Fashion firms with a celebrity designer, for example, or asset management firms with a star investment manager, are particularly vulnerable. Yet, even large, global firms can be exposed.
In…
Branding and Venture Capital: Key Findings from BIG:VC from desantisbreindel
In partnership with the National Venture Capital Association, the Brand Influence Guide for Venture Capital (BIG:VC) explores the importance of brand management in the VC industry. For BIG:VC, we surveyed venture capitalists, startup CEOs and limited partners from the NVCA and the…
Finding a unique brand position in a field as crowded and competitive as asset management isn’t easy. It’s tempting to fall back on safe ideas and tired claims. But in today’s financial climate, there’s nothing “safe” about an undifferentiated brand. This whitepaper examines best practices for creating a distinctive and compelling brand position in asset management.
Innovation. It’s been a recurring theme in almost every one of our conversations with B2B companies looking to refresh their brands. From the CMO to the CEO, B2B executives have been laser-focused on building brands that convey innovation.
When did this word become so ingrained in our lexicon? According to Google Ngram, the…
Depending on your outlook, the financial services industry is either an incredibly scary or extremely exciting place to be right now. More than any other industry, financial services companies are facing a paradigm shift brought on by the perfect storm of digitalization, increased regulatory scrutiny and changing demographic profiles and preferences of both clients and…
Recently we helped a top-10 ETF firm launch an innovative new investment product. From the beginning, it was clear the firm’s leadership saw an ad campaign as the means to an effective launch. During our initial conversations, they wanted to jump right into creative concepts. That might have been the right approach with…
We recently sat down with Len Costa, the partner overseeing content strategy and the digital and social media practice at RooneyPartners. Len’s team designs strategies that help organizations connect with key constituencies, optimize their brand identities, and engage and activate clients, prospects, and the public.
We were interested in his take on the use…