15th December 2015

Royal London: What’s in a brand?

When many people think of a company’s ‘brand’ they often think of its logo or colours – but creating a ‘brand’ is about more than just an identifiable design. It’s about building a personality for your company that shows its values and what it stands for.

A brand is the overall perception of a company in the marketplace. And if you’ve worked hard to build a company that you believe in, having a strong brand can help get potential clients to believe in it too – giving you a competitive edge.

So how can advisers go about creating and defining their brand in the marketplace?

You could start by finding out what’s important to your potential clients and what you could do to make the biggest difference to them, and build your brand around this.

For example, if a mortgage adviser wants to attract new business from younger clients (say those in their 20s or 30s) it may be important for them to brand their company as approachable and trustworthy, as well as knowledgeable. Demonstrating these values will help connect with potential clients who may be inexperienced in dealing with financial services.

Connecting with clients on an emotional level and maintaining communication and relationships with them is vital for the success of a brand, as this encourages customer loyalty.

You might have noticed that we’ve been going through a bit of a brand transformation ourselves recently. We’ve been gradually moving all our business to one single brand name – Royal London – to make things simpler for our customers. Our protection businesses are the latest to rebrand, with Bright Grey rebranding to Royal London on 30 November and Scottish Provident starting to rebrand from 31 December.

Royal London has been helping people plan for their financial future since 1861 (in fact we started out by helping people to avoid the stigma of a pauper's grave).  Our brand helps us to show that we’re proud of our heritage and committed to delivering the values of the past – such as loyalty, good service and maintaining long-term relationships. And our quirky style helps demonstrate that we like to do things a little bit differently from other providers. These values are reflected in the language and the imagery we use throughout our marketing and advertising.

You can find out more about our brand in our video blog. Here Emma Hill, our Head of Brand and Sponsorship, talks about the important points to remember when creating successful brands. So, if you’ve been wondering what you can do to strengthen your own brand, you might pick up a few useful tips. 

And if you’re not sure where to start when communicating your brand or ideas to clients, you could take a look at our tailored marketing solutions website. We have a wide selection of marketing materials that you can brand with your own logo and details to help you make the case for protection.

Business Development, Protection