Yin and Yang Model to Branding

According to Asian culture, Yin and Yang are complementary sides to every individual, and it provides balance so that the individual is harmonized. Like Yin and Yang, the human brain has two hemispheres; one on the left, another on the right. The left side of the brain deals with logic and rationality, while the right side is concerned with emotions, dreams and creativity. In branding the Yin represents the rational, while the Yang represents the emotional. Both the left side and the right side of the brain are important for people to have because it creates balance.

Based on this concept, bank either builds their brand personality to appeal to the rationality, or the emotions of consumers, while others use both. This way of looking at consumers began with packaged consumer goods, but has adopted rapidly by practically every type of business in various industries, since it has shown to provide many benefits. With specific products are services, therefore, the bank need to build a brand must based on combination of opposite factors. That is philosophy make many successful brands in Asia, especially in Japan with famous brand in the world such as Toyota, Sony.

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1.3. Building banking brands

To have a good and prestigious brand such as HSBC or Citibank, Vietnamese banks must spend much time and expenditures in a long time to prove their ability, management ability as well as finance power before have customers‘

absolute confidence. To do this, banks must understand the importance of brand and other factors, which have influence on process of developing brand of bank. Next step we will consider elements relate to brand and role of brand in banking.

1.3.1 Introduction about brand in banking a. The importance of brand to bank in business

If brands are a strategic asset, then how do they affect business? A strong brand provides a point of differentiation for the member and customer by leaving an impression in the mind of the members or customers. It builds a long-term relationship for long-term gain through loyalty and trustworthiness. The goal of branding is to create perceptions that drive choice of customers.

Figure 1.1: Importance of brand to banks

[Source: Steffen Leditschke, Successful branding in the Financial Sector. 2004, p50]

There are two things, which affect people‘s perceptions and preference communications about an offering and experience with the offering.

Communications and experience both affect brand image. More importantly, what

you communicate and the experience you deliver must be closely aligned to build a positive brand image. Finance in general and banking in particular is, as it were, the stomach of the country, from which all the other organs take their tone. Brands have until recently been a relatively minor part of the marketing message of retail financial services companies and bankers in particular.

With changes over in 20 years, since economic reform began in 1986 have changed the pattern of banking. Some of these have been driven by changes in regulation, but more significant have been the changes in consumer behavior.

Today, demand of customers has changed much. Customers are now more aware of safety of their asset and comfortable with new technologies. Customers are more willing to purchase banking services such as home banking, internet banking….

They have embraced change, regulatory changes have made many financial products more transparent, and thus more easily compared.

b. Why should banks try to build their brands?

Until now, there are 37 commercial banks and representatives in Vietnam.

Under strong competitive pressure from all sides, domestic banks must build strong their brand in order to attract customers as well as to cope with competitors. If they don‘t build brand for themselves that means they will make them in trouble in the process of competition. To avoid being merged and acquisitioned by foreign large banks, banks must have strong enough brand to cope with them as well as to attract customers There are many advantages to businesses when they build successful brands for them. These include higher prices, higher profit margins, better distribution, and customer loyalty. Businesses that operate successful brands are also much more likely to enjoy higher profits. A brand is created by augmenting a core product with distinctive values that distinguish it from the competition. This is the process of creating brand value.

c. Brand value in banking sector

A good brand name is invaluable asset in banking industry. Banks rely

trust the bank company with large sums of money. Branding is particularly important to the financial sector in the current economy, since investors and other big spenders are being cautious about making large financial transactions.

Finance Brand is a London company that tracks the value of bank brands. The company tracks 150 global brands across all industries. The top financial services brand, holding the number 13 spot on Finance Brand‘s worldwide list, is Citibank.

(According to Interbrand, the world's top brand name is Coca-Cola with brand value is over $ 70 billion).

Scandals are not the only factor affecting brand value in the banking sector.

Banks and financial service firms have sought to trim their budgets over the last few years. Like other industries, the banking sector has had to react to the recent economic downturn by becoming leaner and more efficient. Seeing losses in investment units, banks are looking to their consumer divisions to find a profit. As a result, instead of being rewarded for bringing banks their business, customers are often seeing higher fees and decreasing personalized customer service. Some banks have even adjusted their fee structure to encourage customers to use ATM machines instead dealing with bank tellers. These cost-cutting measures lead to a depersonalized banking experience in which customers have little emotional connection to the bank's brand. The lack of human contact is increased by modern technology. While many basic banking transactions can now be handled either at an ATM or at a bank's Web site, neither outlet is capable of perceiving, let alone addressing, a customer's fears or frustrations. Unfortunately, as banks rely more and more on technological outlets for service, there is often fewer helpful and knowledgeable staff in the bank lobby when the customer shows up in person.

Maintaining the value of a single bank brand is difficult. Corporation in the industry bring new branding challenges. The function of a brand is to make the bank and its services recognizable and memorable. In corporation, however, corporate politics often become involved. The fate of the acquired bank's name can be perceived as a symbol for what is happening to the bank itself. Employees are afraid

for their careers often fight to preserve what they believe are the core identity of their company.

d. Signals to recognize a strong brand in market

It is not easy to recognize the mistakes of bankers in their investment of brand building. Experience from crisis in 1997 in Asian countries gave us important lessons about right investment decision in branding. A large brand without difference or specific characteristic or image, it could not get profit. The same to the case a large brand and famous service without profit also lead to failure in the near future.

Moreover, to have a strong brand as well as to know that we need to know necessary signals to a brand in market. What are signals to know a brand is strong in the financial market? There are many signals to recognize a strong brand, but in banking industry, we only need to know six signals below. Those are Difference, Image, Service Quality, Price, Profits and Distribution channel.

You can know and make a plan for building and developing a strong brand in the future. Therefore, how to measure our brand whether it is strong or not .You cannot describe how your brand difference to competitors in one word. With product are invisible, it is very difficult for banks when make customers see the difference between your service to competitors. If do not that, your brand is not strong. Why did you succeed? What would you have in that case? The answer is certainly profit. However, how could we to cope with financial difficulty or crisis if we would have not a strong brand to base. If not, certainly you go to bankruptcy.

If you cannot summarize your mission, task, vision, and brand value in a word. That mean your customers also cannot feel. Therefore, you have to answer clearly the question: ―what your brand‘s mission is? How does it develop and where is your brand‘s. Customers only remember your brand‗s symbol when it is clearly different and salient to others. If you have intention to imitate to others, you will fail.

Company value is visible assets. This is right. However, if your bank has been fired

all assets disappear, how much is your bank value? At that time, only brand is factor can help your company to restore

Who make brand in first time is very important, all people remember to founder of company, who help company to growth as today. Moreover, to make a good image of leader in customers ‗s mind is very important of all brand, especially that is commercial bank, where all beliefs have been put in one leader‘s hand .

Above are some analyses about six standards to know a strong brand in market. We need to strive make a good image through service quality and others factors which relate to customers as well as employees in your bank. Actually, systematic brand building process is important for creating a strong brand.

f. Process of building & developing brand

Building brand in general as well as in banking field in particular is a complicated and difficult process. To build and develop a brand, the bank needs have a detail and suitable process. A number of models of the branding process exist in the literature; however, they have generally been criticized for the lack of empirical testing. The brand building processes in general and will be reviewed in this section. Brand building process focuses on building the overall brand. Since all brands have an identity, the framework is applicable to any type of brand. After considering factors, which relate to a bank brand, we found that, building brand is a process of combination and choice of invisible and visible attributes as well with objective to differentiate product and service by meaning, interesting and attractive way. To build a sustainable brand in the long time, bank can apply seven steps as follow:

First step is marketing research. This is a necessary preparation step to any marketing expert or brand expert. To have this information system, bank can outsource or to do by itself. If bank does research by it self, there are two types:

qualitative research method (Focus group, Face to Face, interview) or quantitative research method (questionnaire, survey...).

Next step is building brand vision. This is bank‘s neat and clear message, which banks to send customers and express development trend of bank in coming years. In other words, brand mission express the reason for bank‘s existence. Below are some roles of brand mission. Unify bank‘s development aims and make consistence in leadership point out a strategy to use human resource. Making measurement for development of brand and make base for building development objective in the future. Encourage employees towards a common development objective. HSCB is a typical example for this or Sony, IBM and Honda….

Third step after building brand mission is to map out strategy for brand development. That mean we must have a strategy for developing brand in short term and long term. Fourth step, based on strategy of brand development, we continue to choose position for brand or Brand positioning. In this step, we have to determine our brand position compare to competitors in market, which are recognized by customers. In this step, there are eight characteristics. Fifth step is building system of Brand Awareness. This is a set of imaginativeness, which bank wants its image to survive in customers‘ mind through service, bank, employees‘ behaviors, logo, symbol….However, it is not enough when building system, and we must make customers remember, understand and accept our brand. In other words, we have to bring brand to public. This is very important step in building brand. To do that, many people know brand. Through that, we assert the success of brand in the market. That is core problem lead to success in building brand. To get that we need to do a continuous step, that is brand media operation. The last step is brand evaluation. Through this step, we know awareness level, imaginativeness in customers‘ mind, or customers‘ loyalty to brand. Besides that, brand measurement also help to know the effectiveness level of cost budget to developing brand in bank.

1.3.2. Factors in building strong brand a. General brand factors

To answer the question: What factors are important in building brand value?

Professor David Jobber identifies seven main factors in building successful brands, as illustrated in the diagram below:

Quality is a vital ingredient of a good brand. The core benefits must be delivered well, consistently. Research confirms that, statistically, higher quality brands achieve higher market share and higher profitability that their inferior competitors.

Positioning is about the position a brand occupies in a market in the minds of consumers. Strong brands have a clear, often unique position in the target market.

It can be achieved through the combination of brand name, image, service standards, product guarantees, packaging and the way in which it is delivered.

Figure 1.2: Seven factors in building successful brands [Source: David Jobber, 7 Important Factors in Building Brand Value, 2005, p2]

Repositioning: occurs when a brand tries to change its market position to reflect a change in consumer‘s tastes. This is often required when a brand has become tired.

Well-blended Communications: All elements of the promotional mix need to be used to develop and sustain customer perceptions. Initially, the challenge is to build awareness, then to develop the brand personality and reinforce the perception.

History and development process of ABBank

Mission, Vision and Objectives of ABBank