Outlier Briefing: Best practices in financial services branding in the COVID-19 era with Landor’s Louis Sciullo

Welcome to Tearsheet’s Outlier Podcast. This subscriber-only podcast is exclusive for our Outlier members. We go deeper with subject matter experts, to take actionable steps that can impact your businesses and practice. Today’s guest is Louis Sciullo, executive director financial services at Landor North America, a brand consulting and design firm with deep roots in the financial services industry. He’s spent nearly three decades managing Wall Street brands like Lehman Brothers and Barclays. Now, he leads the financial services practice at Landor, supporting and growing some of the largest financial brands. Louis joins us to talk about what the COVID-19 pandemic calls for from both large and small financial brands. He explores the transformation of financial retail and what it takes to be an agile financial brand. We discuss customer retention strategies in an increasingly competitive environment.

Takeaways

• The value of branding: The financial services category suffered over a very long period of time mostly because the value of brand and marketing was recognized so late.
• Beyond the COVID-19 crisis: Branding’s greatest value is in managing the transformation that’s happening, not just the COVID-19 crisis. You can see the institutions that have focused on developing a true value proposition and purpose to their brands are most suited to delivering the right types of communications during this time period.
• The move to digital: If there was any hesitation left around digital experiences, they’re gone now. For sure. This crisis has brought a lot of new requirements for digital experiences to be authentic, sincere and warm. It also showed that technology alone will not be enough — the technologies that created efficiencies over human interactions can become a nuisance during a time like this. Now, brands need to be human and connect to purpose.
• Building a fintech brand: Many smaller firms lack the brand management infrastructure and talent to do this on their own. There’s one key thing fintechs should know: know what you’re building. Are you building a business to sell or to buy?

Listen to the full briefing

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