Brand Audit
Tandem Bank
Tandem is a digital banking start up company, led by Azimo Group. Founded by Ricky Knox and Matt Cooper, the organization successfully drawn its path to th challenging financial market environment in the United Kingdom. The Tandem Bank aims to offer breakthrough innovation into the banking sector, by comprising the market offer whih competes with the giants of the UK banking industry through the digitalized solutions and mobile-centered technology. The Tandem is a fighter from the initial stages of its existence, going after external financing and winning this challenge by attracting over £100 million in investment. In order to look into the core of the brand strategy, it is important to outline that the bank will offer all the major service of the banking sector, incluidng credit cards, savings and loans and the related services, - all, backed up and supported by the web applications and call centers (Aaker, 2001).
The key element of the Tandem Bank market strategy is the interaction with the client and offering time-saving and effective financial solutions, based on the technological high-tech solutions and latest digital technology. The differential of the Tandem Bank is the ambition to go beyond the digital bank proposition, ut rather build a unique customer experience through partnership with a Good Bank – Tandem Bank. The purpose of this document is to explain and present our coherent and comprehensive brand strategy, which answers the key questions: Who, How , Why and When?
The Industry
Traditional banking sector is driven by four major consumer drivers of loyalty: confidence, convenience, quality and reliability of the service. The type of product, with which the companies deal, is very speific and the substitute threat is extremely limited. At the same time, general trend to the use of digital technology and the growing availability of smartphones and the applications, which are able to support financial operations on the market draw banks attention to the potential of this segment. While large banks like HSBC and Barklays focus their innovation efforts on buildin user-firendly online interface to reduce dependency on the physical network, favourable governmental legislation fosters the emergence and growth of digital-only financial institutions (Pavlou, 2003). This increase in digital market presence in banking sector outlines the complexity of competition on the UK market. The market is protectionists with regards to new entrants, which demand high initial and working capital investemnt to survive in a long term. In spite of the natural barriers, technology enables innovation and many new market players have entered the UK economy in banking sector over the last decade. Some of the major competitors among substitutes to traditional banking are Atom Bank, Osper, Mondo, Starling and other organizations. Atom Bank is the only direct competition with the banking licence, identical to Tandem Bank (Williams, 2015).
Brand Summary
Brand Basics
The purpose of the brand is to create an experience and in order o further draw on the layers of the brand strategy, the first step is to define the type of brand that Tandem built. Tandem is a service and idea brand, which service proposition is based on helping clients make money and solve financial problems before they actually happen.
The brand theme is based on three major pillars, outlining the connected thematic of all the brand campaigns: freedom; partnership; challenge, no-stress environment. The unified theme is expressed through presenting the brand as a young and couraged company, which aligns its values with the core public. The organization places statements like “we live more and bank less”, “together we are tandem”, “we save without stress”, “we aim a little bit higher”, “we feel free” highlight
Tandam Bank aims at turning the people’s perception of money from the need and concern into a “tool to do amazing staff with”. Tandam Bank was founded to challenge the general concept of traditional banks, which make money often at the expense of their customers by offering long-term loans and not giving sufficient insight into the opprotunity costs. This should be done along with taking advantage of the newest digital technology to offer unique, effective and “desired” solutions to the clients.
Brand Vision and Mission
Tandem Bank Vision: “To become a market leader in digital banking segment, by building a truly good bank image through placing customers’ interest first and working in tandem with our clients as partners in money”.
The mission of the company is: “To establish mutually-beneficial and sustainable relationsihps with our clients through offering the top-knotch technology solutions, security, quality and service, and ensure that money is an effective tool to make amazing staff”.
Brand Values
Tandem has pursued its differentiated branding strategy in line with the core objective to go beyond the classic digital bank solution, able to offer only limited competition to the market gaints in financial sector. The Brand was born to challeneg the traditional cliches about the relationships that banking institutions develop with private sector clients and bring a concept of truly mutual partnership relationships. With that in mind, the brand strategy as well as the organizational identity is gounded on the following principles (Tandem Bank, 2015):
Help people save money;
Anticipate and solve problems before they happen;
Transparency in business in fees and charges;
Honesty;
Integrity;
Innovation in customer experience and technology.
The foundation of the above values lies in the Brand name itself. We strongly believe that working together in tandem, we can build the environment and unique relationships formula with our shareholders and stakeholders, which can benefit all and ensure that trust and integrity drive long term cooperation.
Brand Architecture and Identity
Tandem Bank believes that relationships are always personal and, thus, emotions are critical for successful brand image. Business, brand and customer relationships are considered art and Tandem architecture is based on the following emotional elements:
Brand Emotional Benefits
Brand Pillars
The anaysis of the emtional and functional benefits allow identifying three core brand pillars: innovation in techonology, which allows offering the newest and safest solutions to all categories of clients, complete product line, competitive with traditional banks in the UK market, offering a comprehensive and effective solution to the customers and full banking licence, givign clear compettive advantageb to Tandem Bank, relative to its competition.
Consumer value of Brand Pillars
Brand Positioning
Tandem Bank positions itself as a bank for young people in their 20s and 30s, who with busy lifestyle and who are willing to be independent from the bureacratic traditional banking structure without losing an opportunity to reiceve high-quality service and one-stop-shopping solution from their partner bank. The analysis of the emotional brand benefits and the evaluation of the consumer value of identified brand pillars, allows building on brand means. Tandem Bank wants to answer the main questions, which clients often ask themselves, choosing new and innovative, but, yet, not tested solution on the market: “What does this brand mean? How will I interact with it?
The answer to this question is very simple. Tandem Bank means transparency, convenience and partnership. We build long-term and mutually-benefiial and mutually-depenent relationships. This means that we will aim to creating special and personalized investment portfolio, offering differentiated service and options to our clients, which will make you stay with us. The truth is that in Tandem, each member is crutial and the Bank needs its customers as much as customers need the bank (Finskud, 2009).
Elevator Pitch
“Tandem Bank is a bank for people, who value partnerhips and who would like to see money as an effective stressless tool to do amazing staff. We believe that transparency and close partnership is the only way to work with financial resources and ensure that the service and idea brand, which Tandem Bank is, is comptitive and sustainable in a long term. If you believe that you can make money work for you, value time and independence in your financial decisions, Tandem Bank is your Bank”.
Brand Operational Requirements
Tandem Bank is a service company operating in the UK financial market with the a varied product proposition, including loans, credits cards and investment services. Taking into consideration that the company works in purely digital environment, offering online customer service and the bac-up function from call centers, it is possibel to identify several touch points with the clients and other stakeholders, which affect the operational requireemns of the company.
The Brand aims at making their employees their main customers and ambassadors. Witht that in mind, the company develops a set of virtual trainings and personal and group workshops for the employees for three areas: knowlegde of the products and services, understanding and basic knowledge of the system logic, customer service skills. The organizational culture is based around the values, outlined previously in this document and, thus, all the training on customer service and product knowledge sets as objective customer-centric behavior and one touch-point solution for the clients. We aim to make comunicaion personal by ensuring that customers can receive answers to most of the questions at one touch point. Tandem Bank operational requirements are met by application of the following training programs:
Vitrual Learning Space (VLC) for employees
Technical workshops for commercial staff;
Professional face-to-face sales staff training;
Professional face-to-face training of technical staff povided by external consultants from Development Company.
Informal Teambuildings to promote innovation culture.
We believe that this multifaceted approach builds on effectiev operational training strategy to meet the requirements and support the brand strategy.
Brand Inventory
The analysis of the touch points and products, offered by the company allows outlining the core elements of the brand inventory. The inventory includes all the tools required to market and position the products of the company. As such, the inventory can be classified in three major categories: visual identity, social media presence, presentation of the products and services and corporate social responsibility.
Visual Idenity of Tandem Bank is threefold: simplicity, interactive design of the website and advertisement, personality (through the use of individuals and stories). Tandem Bank logo uses two colours, white and blue, building on emotional response of calm, trust and continuity. The brand uses the “Tandem” word as the core of the logo as well as its slogan to create a personal bond with the clients and highlight the personalization and customization of the services through long-term partnership. The website of the company utilizes front-page interactive banners, focused on the idea of tandem, further enhancing and deepening customers’ personal bond with the brand and its proposition and “young message. The simplicity of the image and agenda makes the visual identity very clean and direct, communicating the idea of partnership and no-stress enviornment. This approach is a way to uild on reverse advertisement campaign to differentiate the brand from the image of traditional banks, dominating the industry in the UK.
Social Media Presence of Tandem bank is very targetted and “shy”. The company is highly aware of the risks associated with only limited control over the brand exposure through social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and linked in. With that in mind, the company chooses to use social media for customer engagement in campaigns, such as crowdfunding and make the top manageemnt team more “reachable” to its public, publishign the news, related to the activities of co-founders and the industry news. Facebook is used to communicate the brand and uild on the brand language. The news feed is clean and genera. Linkedin profile of the company is used to provide basic informatio on the company and the backgrounds of the founders.
Presentation of the Porducts and services is based on the digital marketing and should ensure clear presentation of the services through the company’s website, with detailed infomration available upon registration. The marketing strategy should consider the specificity of the industry in the UK. It is evident that banking industry is highly regulated and the most effecivte marketing and promotional campaigns in the sector include traditional TV and magazine advertisements as as well as more product specific billboard advertisement. Additionally, the company will utilize the advanced Customer Retention Management (CRM) system to build on specific long-term online advertisement campaign, using customer profile recognition tool (Aaker, 2012).
Summary
The UK banking sector is dirven by oligopolity from major traditional baks, which dominate the financial flows due to the size and scale of its international operation. Brand image is critical for success in the industry, where customer loyalty is based upon confidence, convenience, quality and reliability of the service. Tandem Banking has a challenging task to incoporate new values to the banking industry and brings forward its Brand strategy to traditionally early-adopters, who are more receptive to independent and digital-only solutions to money, one of the most sensitive products.
The present brand strategy is a comprehensive document that explains not only the brand values, vision, mission and identity, but outlines the specific brandoperational requirements, inventory and architecture, which will help Tandem Bank to build sustainable competitive advanatge in the UK market.
Works Cited
Tandem bank. About Us. Tandem Bank Official Website. Web 13 Apr 2015, https://tandem.co.uk/ [Accessed 9 June 2016]
Aaker, A. David. Developing Business Strategies. 6th Edition.. New York: John Willey & Sons. 2001. Print.
Aaker, A. Davir, 2012. Building Strong Brands. New York: Simon and Schuster. 2012. Print.
Finskud, Lars. Developing Winning Brand Strategy. London: Business Express Press. Print.
Pavlou Paul. Consumer Acceptance of Electronic Commerce: Integrating Trust and Risk with the Technology Acceptance Model.2003. International Journal of Electronic Commerce. Vol.7., Issue 3: 3-15.
Wiliams, Oscar. Britain just got a new digital bank and it's raising tens of millions of pounds. 2015. Business Insider [Online]. Web 13 Apr 2015, http://uk.businessinsider.com/tandem-gets-banking-licence-close-to-multi-million-pound-funding-round-2015-12 [Accessed 9 June 2016]
