White Marble CEO Twink Field joined an engaging and thought provoking panel at the Gramercy Institute this morning, alongside Richard Alpert from Crimea River, Margaret Delesalle from J.P. Morgan and Katerina Rabava from BNY Mellon.
The influence and power of brand was widely debated, with a range of perceptions around how this needed to evolve in 2020, with customer loyalty declining and more investors making belief based purchases rather than purely strategic.
The key themes that came out across the panel was the importance of authenticity, empathy and values. “To build a brand narrative it needs to resonate throughout the whole company in a way that relates to every employee” explained Twink. “The companies that we’ve worked with that have most successfully done this have hosted workshops throughout the business, not just for the sales team on the front line but also how the brand can resonate and be lived by the Ops team or inform how the HR team are recruiting.”
Margaret evolved this point further, commenting that “there is a fine line between value and commerciality. It has to be something that your workforce believes in, that is infused within the culture of a business.”
As the conversation turned towards culture, and the importance of how a brand is perceived, Katerina highlighted “we are more exposed to a culture in B2B markets. How the two cultures are perceived and how they interact really impacts on a brand.” Richard followed this on, agreeing that “Branding is about significance. Values drive more than logic and the recipe of relaying that is through the content built out through brand extension across blogs, social media and other mediums that previously have been seen as more supportive.”
Circling back to authenticity, Twink highlighted “with a growing number of communication channels, inconsistency anywhere can have a negative impact on brand. It needs to be actively managed. Its not just about finding the differentiating gold dust, its about looking at brand across the board and how it can be sustainably and consistently implemented.”
Twink is a regular speaker on Brand across financial services. For further insight read her blog summarising her BrightTalk session on “Staying authentic to your corporate narrative” here.