Awareness, Only Half The Battle

The common mistake in branding within financial services is that awareness is the same as affection, when this just isn’t the case.

Awareness is certainly a starting point, but it’s got nothing to do with the desire to use a service or indeed its relevance.

In the process of researching Australian financial planning companies this week in a poll of 840 mass affluent Australians, looking at the various brands in the market the group started to get an idea of just how bland the market seems to be with no one it seems standing for anything beyond the immediate money grab surrounding the June 30 super changes.

The stunning affirmation of this fact came this week when CoreData ran a survey to try and understand and get clarity around the competitive positioning of the different brands in the market from a consumer point of view.

In addition to some desk top research relating to building a map of the ‘got-to-market’ offer of some of the top dealer groups in Australia, we wanted to measure the resonance and carriage of the offers in the market place beyond the financial services industry.

The truth is there isn’t any or any of real significance.

The best know business in the survey was AXA with 97.6% of respondents stating they were aware of the Melbourne-based group’s offer.

But this didn’t equate into affection and a keenness to do business via the group, or others like it.

The poorest of the groups covered it seems was Financial Wisdom with only 10% of those in the survey stating they had even heard of the Financial Wisdom brand.

That’s not surprising, given the comparative marketing spend on these businesses – AXA buys metro-lights, TV ads and has a worldwide relationship with a top 10 advertising agency and indeed has improved it services to consumers every year that we have measured its process since 2003.

Financial Wisdom on the other hand, as far as we can tell has none of that – relying on just the push of its planners to grow their business.