FINANCIAL SERVICES
MARCH, 1999

"In Buffalo or Britain, It's All the Same: and It's All In a Name"

Financial Services Marketing

John Adams

For HBSC, spreading its branding strategy overseas was the best way to bring together a diverse family of international businesses.

It didn't take much for the folks at Marine Midland Bank to realize that importing HSBC's brand name from abroad was the way to go. All they had to do was look up from their computer terminals, "If we look out our window, Canada is right there; we can see another country," says EVP of marketing for the Buffalo NY-based HSBC Bank USA, which for years had been known as Marine Midland. "Despite that, a lot of people didn't even realize that we had a partner bank right across the border."

Like Marine Midland, the bank across the border, Hong Kong, Bank of Canada, is part of the HSBC Group, the London-based multinational-banking giant with $483 billion in assets under management. But with subsidiary names as divergent as HongKong Bank of Canada and Marine Midland, not to mention Saudi British Bank, Han Seng Bank and British Bank of the Middle East, to name a few, you almost have to excuse customers and even employees for not necessarily known they're all part of the same family. With more than 5,000 offices in 79 countries in Asia, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa, the parent bank has decided that it's time for HSBC to become a surname.

The institution has embarked on a $50 million global branding effort, a process that will replace the names of individual local institutions with the unifying HSBC moniker. Soon, all banks and any ventures connected with the HSBC Group will reflect HSBC's name in some way, down to the soon-to-be-renamed Marine Midland Arena in Buffalo. "We're moving toward a global economy, much more so than n the past," she says. "It makes sense for us to be marketed as HSBC."
Renaming

A SHRINKING WORLD

The EVP says rapidly growing technology has shrunk the international banking landscape, putting a cross-border player like HSBC in a good position to take advantage, but only if it's aggressive in letting the world know how truly global it is.

HSBC Bank USA's brand name change was completed by the end of June. Canada followed in July, and the rest of the global changes are scheduled for completion by year-end. The changes follow a review of the brand name by an internal team in London. "HSBC is well-known, and we wanted to leverage that," she says. "Efficiency can be much greater in one brand name than a bunch of subbrands that don't hang together in a clear way."

The institutions' Web sites are also being changed to include a unifying feel for the first few pages, with links to Web sites for subsidiaries that remain local, but redesigned to more closely match the parent site. "In the past, the sites had a different approach in terms of look and feel," the EVP says. HSBC Bank USA's logo, however, will remain the same, with Marine Midland having adopted HSBC's corporate logo in 1994, following the acquisition in 1987.

The new brand name is being gradually introduced to the public through advertising campaigns in the United States and abroad this year. Initially, advertisements announced the branding change through two ad agencies, Partners and ShevackWolf in New York and Buffalo and the Lowe Group in London. The first ads conveyed that the bank hadn't been acquired, just a name facelift. "You need to explain to people that they will be banking in the same building with the same people and the same organization standing behind it," says the SVP of Partners and ShevackWolf and account director on the HSBC project.

A CHANGE WILL DO YOU GOOD

Renaming

Up next is a campaign to introduce HSBC's expanded services through a series of print, television, radio and outdoor ads in the United States positioning the institution as a global player. When a pending acquisition of Republic Bank is completed, additional ads will kick in, aimed at retaining that institution's customers. "With the acquired customers, the aim is a bit different," he says. "You need to reassure retail and commercial customers that the people they are used to dealing with will still be there in the morning. The security of their firm hasn't changed a bit, but there are now a lot more services available to them."

Branding consultants say HSBC is building a future brand from an identity that it has always had, a tack they say bodes well for the bank despite going against the industry grain of starting over with a new brand. "Most institutions never evaluate the pros and cons of their current brand name," says Jim Dettore, president of the Miami-based Brand Institute, a biotechnology branding, pharmaceutical branding, and consumer branding consultancy firm. "More often than not they don't realize the amount of brand equity that they already have. They think they need a new brand name strategy, because of a merger or some other transaction."
Renaming