Maintaining Momentum for Your Banking Brand

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Intro: This is Believe in Banking, a podcast series for decision makers, influencers, and leaders, featuring experts taking on the financial industry’s most pressing issues with insight and empathy. The podcast features information and conversations designed to enlighten and empower.

Gina Bleedorn (00:17): Welcome to our Believe in Banking podcast. I’m Gina Bleedorn, President and CEO of Adrenaline.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (00:23): And I’m Juliet D’Ambrosio, Chief Experience Officer at Adrenaline.

Gina Bleedorn (00:29): Today, Juliet and I are excited to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to both of our hearts and it’s about brand and brand experience and not just making a brand, but keeping it relevant. We see this across clients really of all sizes and help clients of all sizes in different ways in making their brand experience come to life. And so for some top-10 banks right now, we are working on how the brand experience manifests itself in the branch channel, in the human channel, for our community clients – banks and credit unions. In many cases, we have helped create a brand, sometimes a brand new brand, sometimes a refreshed brand, and then it needs to live in every channel and every touchpoint. And there’s pros and cons.

The bigger you are, the bigger scale you have, the bigger overarching brand halo you have, but the harder it is to control how the brand manifests itself across every touchpoint. Then the smaller organization, it is actually easier to change and control the brand across all touchpoints. But in both situations, maintaining momentum and keeping the brand living and evolving without reinventing, but sustaining and co-creating and keeping it live over time is an absolute must to remain relevant for the audiences that you want to attract and retain. So, that is what Juliet and I are going to discuss today with some specific examples around some that are doing it well.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (02:22): Thanks, Gina. And to put a really fine point on the business need behind branding, I think that this is something that we find ourselves answering with our clients often to help them answer to their boards of directors. Why branding? What is the ROI that we’re going to get from a strong, and what we’re talking about today, a sustained brand experience? And I just want to call out a few key facts that the notion of brand and brand differentiation is more powerful than it has ever been. It can drive two times the shareholder value the more clear, differentiated and lived the brand is. So just grounding us back in that ground truth. And the other statistic, I love to data your face and really people’s faces off, we both love to do that, is thinking about the purpose and role of strong brands that are consistent and differentiated and values-led across every touchpoint is so deeply important.

A YouGov study in 2025, this was right at the end of last year, the number one brand differentiator and what will drive a Millennial or a Gen Z to switch financial providers. Three in five millennials or Gen Z will switch FIs if they have a strong and visible values alignment. If I believe what you believe as an organization, then I will switch. We know that there’s all this switching momentum happening. And the only way that a prospect is going to know if you believe what they believe or not is if it’s visible, if it’s felt, if it’s lived at every channel, at every experience across the brand. So this is not just something that’s close to our hearts. And to be honest, it is. It’s very close to our hearts. It’s close to our heads too, and it is absolutely critical for our clients of all sizes that we see.

I want to talk about one, if I may, just an example of some of what we’re seeing here of how this idea of once a brand is launched, then what? Then what happens? And this is a client that they are a large credit union, about $4 billion in assets. They are in the Northeast and they have recently rebranded. We’re now in year two post-rebrand with them, and we’re working with them on essentially a youth banking strategy. And the reason that we are doing this is that now that the dust has settled behind their rebrand, they’ve done an amazing full funnel marketing brand awareness campaigns. They are just leading the industry and growing, growing new memberships. They have to keep this momentum going. And so this youth banking strategy is meant really to do just that. It takes their new position in the marketplace and looks at it through three different lenses.

One are their products. Two are their digital services. And three is a focus on education, financial literacy, and financial wellness. This is specifically focused on young Millennials, Gen Z and now we are now seeing the beginnings of older Gen Alpha who are sort of moving into their high school years and about to become financial decision-makers on their own. So this focus of bringing a brand to life now, not just through their branch conversions and not just through their beautiful new brand and marketing campaigns, but through the way their services are delivered and what the focus of their resources will be in connecting with these younger audiences is really very powerful testament to why and how this idea of building momentum doesn’t end with the brand launch. It should and must keep going.

Gina Bleedorn (07:03): A trend that I think, Juliet, we’re seeing, and I think you would agree, is that the idea of brand importance is close to is not just our heads. But the idea of sustaining brand momentum, what your brand means, awareness, consideration, watching those trends increase and change over time, that is what leads to not just new member and customer acquisition and new account openings, but quality ones. Something else that has been getting quite a lot of attention over the last couple of years is digital account openings tend to be of lesser quality. In fact, half of them are no longer with the organization statistically after a year. Whereas branch originations, which imply a deeper brand engagement, those are statistically 60 something times more likely of being on the books after a year. So it’s to the point that you’re talking about of being truly relevant with audiences and setting up customers and members for life and not for a rate.

That continues to be in the forefront all the way up to the top of C-suites and boards of organizations along with, by the way, net promoter score. I mean, that’s what people think of your brand. And so the good news, I think brand and the importance of it is less of an if, but more of a how. That is paving the way, honestly, for growth in the financial world. And so I’m happy to see that. So, in the example you just gave about reaching younger audiences and being relevant with specific audiences, bridging into a broader perspective of having a values-led brand and ultimately what that does for you and the importance of being values-led is not just because it’s attractive to the audiences you want to serve, but because it creates a foundational grounding that serves you into the future.

So when we are developing brands, when we have the luxury to do that, we truly co-create them on a values-led base. Then when you launch that brand, it’s the starting gate, it’s not the finish line. And we have found and seen that brands that are less rooted in true purpose and values, they lose momentum faster than ones that are. And it’s harder to be consistent when you have less of a strong base to draw from. Juliet, I’d love for you to speak about examples of how values were developed but then become part of operating culture and part of the action that then customers and members see and thus sustain momentum for brands that will live for years and years into the future.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (10:08): I’m so glad you asked because I have two good examples for the idea of how they are created and then how they are sustained. I don’t want to reveal too much because we have two very special guests who will be appearing on our podcast next month in August. But a recent merger of equals, Pinnacle Bank and Morris Bank merged to create the largest community bank in Georgia, Vallant Bank. So they have recently rebranded. We were honored to work with them and we have their two CEOs who will be joining us next month. They were two very values driven organizations to begin with. But as many merging organizations do, their chance to come together or even to go through an evolution of brand gave them a moment to really reflect, look inside and undertake a new way of seeing their values and especially seeing how they would come together and move forward into the future.

Where does one start even if they’re thinking about might be time to look at a brand evolution or to examine their values? I think a great place is starting with the data and starting with listening to customers, to members and market. And that is an easy way in to really get a sense of how your brand is performing and where the opportunities are. The place to start before taking on any kind of brand evolution is grounded in the data and understanding if your values are clearly understood, articulated, and relevant for today’s employees, for today’s customers and members, and for the members of tomorrow. So values workshop, they tend to be very emotional and they tend to be very rigorous. So we love to work with our clients in both one-on-one discovery and in group discoveries.

We often say it’s sort of like executive therapy sessions in which these deeply held beliefs come to the surface in a way that we can all talk about them and decide: is this who we are? Does this really comprise one of the strands of our DNA? And how does that look moving forward into the future? So values workshops and in the case of Vallant, we actually worked with their two full leadership teams to look at each one of their [institutional] values and figure out how we’re going to pull these together and what ones become sustaining and what values will live on, but in different parts of the brand. So, I can’t wait to talk about that next month.

I will say one of the most powerful ways, and this is true with Vallant Bank and with every other organization that we’re part of creating the brand for, is brand ambassadors. And it’s not a rocket science-like program, but we have seen such tremendous success with a program that draws from different areas of the organization, a group of thoughtful, committed people who can champion the values of the brand. That’s true at launch, like on the Vallant employee launch stage where they actually led a cheer, their brand ambassadors, which came from all areas of the state of Georgia. But the brand ambassadors are true two and three years post-brand launch and on into the future where people who are connected to their peers, to their other teams, are able to both listen and elevate concerns, thoughts, ideas about how to bring the brand to life. It also become key levers of communication to share new ideas about the brand or to constantly be the ones bringing things back to their values.

So that’s a great segue to the next example, which is EastRise Credit Union. We’ve talked about them before another merger of equals in Vermont. It was VSECU, Vermont State Employees Credit Union, merging with NEFCU, New England Federal Credit Union, to create Vermont’s largest credit union. This merger and the process, the operational integration took about two to three years to complete. And during that time, I give so much credit to the CEO and to our clients, the CMO and the director of marketing that took that period of time to look at their values and really focus on how these are not just words that appear on our conference room walls but become living, breathing actions that members feel part of, not only the internal team. So they did a great job with both their launch, with the deployment of brand ambassadors, and then an interesting way that they have expanded, which I really see as a trend in the future, is how values became integrated into their branch experience, not only in the way that staff show up, but in the physical design itself.

So an EastRise branch today has their purpose, their values, their guiding principles, which define how their values come to life into specific actions. They’re visible throughout the design of the spaces, the branches themselves, and then the headquarters become areas to really celebrate not just the brand and what it looks like, but really what it stands for. And so there’s no place that you can turn throughout or area that you can inhabit throughout their beautiful new spaces where you are not clear of what they mean in the world and the ideals that they’re all striving towards.

And we are now looking at to get to the point about momentum and how we continue to grow and sustain. EastRise is now three years post rebrand and we are working with them currently on how to activate brand through the lens of culture and how we take the strong foundation that they built and doing the hard and sometimes frustrating work. Let’s just be honest about it. It’s hard to do this work and to come together, but they did it and the foundation is built and now they have this strong platform to grow with.

Now, they are looking at what’s next. How do we activate our culture, our branch teams, our retail teams, our internal teams, not only our marketing, in taking these values and putting them front and center to help grow membership and deepen relationships. So, I think the example that we’re seeing of it happens at launch and it is a living, breathing commitment that the organization undertakes moving forward, but that commitment will ultimately drive growth.

Gina Bleedorn (17:53): Juliet, I think those stories, really what comes through is the rigor and depth that needs to be there when you’re doing values-led searching and alignment, particularly when you have more than one organization coming together. It’s hard enough to do it within one organization, but the payoff is so great. And an example of actually years later that payoff, one of my favorite rebrands we’ve ever done was Teachers Credit Union based in South Bend, Indiana. About $4 billion in assets renamed and rebranded to Everwise Credit Union a few years ago.

And Juliet, I’d love for you to speak to what we went through and we’ve talked about it on the podcast before the story of Everwise, but what more recently we’ve crossed the chasm from the values and purposed-based brand into relating it to products. And that’s hard to do, but when you do it well and when you do it right, the products have so much more meaning, resonance, and then the people that you will attract, particularly those who are mission and purpose-based and a lot of younger audiences, as you explained before, that leads to so much more success in actual acquisition and retention and the numbers show it.

So Juliet, I’d love for you to speak about Everwise and others where over time that values-based branding has translated into successful product marketing.

Juliet D’Ambrosio (19:27): Yeah. I think it’s to the point that products are so easily commoditized and you can be undercut on a great rate or a give back or any kind of fee-based lever that can be pulled that the ability to tie your product back into your purpose as an organization can be especially powerful both as a differentiator and as stickiness. So with Everwise, I know that they’re one of your favorites. And I just also want to say we love all our babies that we help to create; they’re all beautiful. But I agree with you that Everwise is such a standout for so many ways.

After their rebrand, we have had both the challenge and the opportunity of working with them as their partner in marketing and answering the question of what comes next. And one of them is their product marketing. So we recently completed, it’s called the Max Moments campaign, which shines a light on a product driven outgrowth of their brand purpose, which is all about powering people. So these products were built very specifically for younger audiences. They are products that are around checking accounts. There are personal loans and HELOC campaign, but they’re always pulled back into the idea of empowerment. When you think you can, you can.

That oomph, that empowerment message is brought to bear across this campaign. And of course they have these great new products that were born directly out of their purpose. And the campaign performance is impressive, and we are very proud to share some of these results. We are seeing 3.5% above industry average just from a conversion rate. They are looking at well outside of 1,000 new memberships that have been opened as a direct result of this campaign, and new accounts opened are far exceeding what the initial targets were. So we know that great products that are born from purpose can help drive growth.

Another example is Educational Systems Federal Credit Union, and they come to mind. This is much more recent. This is a credit union in Maryland who has not rebranded, but they have a really powerful mission at the heart of what they do. It’s empowering individuals and communities with accessible financial solutions. So, it sounds both simple and very aspirational at the same time. We’ve worked with them to have a full-funnel digital marketing campaign that shows how they can take their service standards of empowering individuals and communities and marry that with a really thoughtful marketing strategy to come together around these products that are accessible to all of their members and offer more accessible entryways for prospects. It’s a multichannel campaign, and they are upwards of 1,700 conversions in just 30 days. So, I will say this is early days yet they have nearly an 18% search click-through rate, which is triple typical performance in financial services marketing.

So these are two localized examples of how product development tied to purpose and tied to value and then marketed where the purpose is really front and center is a new way that brands both old and new existing and recently launched are growing their momentum.

Gina Bleedorn (23:33): So not only are these campaigns winning by the metrics, but Everwise Max Moments won two Telly Awards. They’re getting industry recognition and it’s all really phenomenal work. And when you see it in situ, it speaks to you and you get how values and brand are actually bridged successfully into products. It’s ultimately around the storytelling of the brand to make that connection.

And so if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, where is my brand? Listen, if you haven’t touched your brand since Covid, you’re in trouble. If you haven’t touched your brand even in the last several years to at least do something with it to keep it relevant and refreshed, that’s a flashing warning light. Ultimately it’s the values-led foundation that has to be there to frame relevant conversations around the brand and an important reminder that the storytelling can’t disappear after launch and needs to evolve but not evolve into something totally different. It needs to be stuck in some way to the threads of the foundation, but it also needs to evolve with the relevance of everything else that’s evolving around us.

So, in between major announcements, how do you keep the brand visible and consistent? And what may seem even boring and repetitive to you and your marketing team, remember the market only sees glimpses of it so that repetitive consistency matters. And then ultimately through your campaigns, things to think about anything educational or financial empowering can’t lose. So whatever flavor of that is appropriate for your brand and what you’re trying to sell, that’s really the basis from which all financial services better meant for people and value lies. And then stories around actual testimonials of members and customers getting helped by your brand, believing in your brand, that always keeps people connected. Then integrating with community to show being part and parcel of the community, particularly for local based institutions and competing against fintechs and national banks, that’s a key part of relevance and trust-building more than anything.

Then finally, even employee perspectives, employee brand advocates, that keeps not only if you had advocates as part of a brand launch keeps them engaged, but the employee manifestation of your brand is the most powerful customer influence of your brand that you could have. So, all of this hopefully is helpful fodder and food for thought as to what brand means in its living essence and how to keep momentum going whether you had a recent launch or a recent refresh or not, your brand must be living, must be evolving, and must be continually relevantly connecting with the people you serve today to have any hope of wanting to get new people you’re going to serve in the future.

Outro: You’ve been listening to Believe in Banking, a podcast series created to empower decision makers, influencers, and industry leaders in financial services.

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