Santander to scrap Abbey, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester brands
LONDON - Santander has announced it is to rebrand all of its UK banking brands to the primary Santander brand.
The Spanish banking giant is to rename its 1,300 Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley branches by the end of 2010.
The Santander brand currently operates in over 40 countries worldwide, but to date has only received UK exposure through its sponsorship of the Formula One British Grand Prix. Recent advertising for the high-street banks has also carried the strapline 'We are Santander'.
'Bringing together the three brands means it will be even easier for customers to manage their finances as they will have access to over 1,300 branches once the change is complete,' said António Horta-Osório, chief executive of Santander's UK businesses. 'With this in mind the time is right to make the move to a single UK identity as Santander, a powerful new force in the UK banking.'
UK marketing for each of the Abbey, A&L and B&B brands is headed up by Keith Moor, who succeeded Jeremy Davies as director of brand and communication last year.
Earlier this year, Moor told Marketing the bank would hold back from a complete rebrand of its UK banking portfolio for fears of 'alienating' consumers: 'We have to be careful - you don't want to alienate the customers and make them feel unwelcome. We are taking them on a very gradual journey. The point of introducing a bit more red, and a bit more imagery to do with the Santander brand, is that it has to deliver extra value to A&L and B&B. So we'll be using the Santander red more in the marketing and promotional space, rather than branding.'
Santander
Comments
James McLintock - 27/05/2009
Anyone know what implications this has for the marketers across each brand?
Mark - 27/05/2009
James - at a guess I'd expect Santander to announce a "restructuring" of the mktg division to "streamline" working processes and "realign" costs to new company requirements. Or rather, the marketers from each brand will be placed in head-to-head competition where there is direct role overlap/duplication between them, with winners getting a suped-up version of their job, and the losers being displaced / made redundant. Other banks are doing similar.
Tony Spaeth - 27/05/2009
Like Starbucks, this is a globalization of brand experience, at some real cost to regional distinctiveness. Societally speaking, is this a good thing? I want to believe that the successful brands' success is a function of product integrity and managerial excellence and that yes, their ability to create trans-national communities is thus a force for the common good.
NH - 27/05/2009
May the force be with you, Tony.
Oliver Mather - 27/05/2009
It's an interesting one because Abbey, at least, seems to have quite a good name at the moment. As long as they don't do an Aviva though, perhaps they can build on it.
sue turner - 02/06/2009
I don't hold a torch for any of the aforementioned identities, but if you wanted to lose presence and demotivate your staff, this would be the way to do it. Santander is a 'bland' brand. It blends in nicely. The sheer size of it will prove to be a management nightmare from a brand/design point of view as regions \(perhaps countries) begin to feel the need to inject local personality or go rogue. This is generally what happens. If they imagine that this will be better for the consumer, I think that the consumer will have different ideas. No one likes to find themselves part of the club they didn't decide to join. It will only work if they have the nous to complement 'global' messaging with local dialogue.