The brand identity for Bangor Savings Bank illustrates many important principles of financial branding.

Consistency, for starters. Bangor always uses the same fonts and the same colors: blue and light beige. This makes it easier to spot something from Bangor Savings Bank and creates familiarity, whereas a constantly changing look confuses people and undermines awareness.

Bangor Savings Bank stays focused. They don’t send a wide and varied range of messages out to the market. They concentrate pretty much on one topic: Free ATMs. The bank is much more likely to get traction by sticking with one simple yet highly relevant message. How often do you see an ad with only one bullet point?

Even their ATM card reinforces the “free ATM” message. What kind of marketing message could you include on your plastic products?

They consistently deploy their identity across all touchpoints – branch, web, print, etc. This helps create a cohesive brand, one where all the parts feel like they go together. That way, there’s no surprises when someone switches from one channel to another.

Note: They allow dogs in their branches. Kudos.

Bangor Savings Bank produced “Maine Tracks,” a compilation CD of alt-country and indie-rock musicians from Maine. The bank gives the CD away to show how it supports Maine’s creative culture. That, and because it’s just kind of a cool thing to do.

Bangor Savings Bank created a brochure all about their brand, which is increasingly common these days. The brochure’s primary audience is presumably employees (both current and future).

There is a secondary palette of brand colors – including contemporary hues like melon and pumpkin – to help visually categorize information.

Here’s a couple of 30-second TV spots where two people with different personalities, different likes and different dislikes agree on one thing: Bangor Savings Bank.

Bangor’s brand identity is the work of a company called Forge. Forge won the account in a review including two other agencies. In the pitch, Forge showed the bank a video it secretly shot in Bangor branches. The video connected with the CEO, who jumped up during the presentation and said, “Yes! That’s It. These people have got it right.”

“Wait. That’s it?? All these months and all we get it three words?”
– John Edwards
Chief Banking Officer
Bangor Savings Bank

At the first presentation of creative materials, Forge opened with the new slogan, “You Matter More.”

Bangor’s Chief Banking Officer recalls thinking, “Wait. That’s it?? All these months and all we get it three words?” That’s the irony of branding. There’s a million pieces of input on the front end, and comparatively little visible output on the back end. Successful brands keep it short, sweet and simple.

Tip of the Hat: To Ron Shevlin, for pointing Bangor Savings Bank out to The Financial Brand.

Never mind that the author of this blog post is only 21, this kid nails it:

“The best way to draw people in is to show how you are different from a bank; rate and fee changes aren’t going to do that.”

His step-by-step advice is elegant in its simplicity:

1. The first step is to figure out who it is you serve.
2. Once you know who exactly you are serving, you’ve got to figure out exactly what they want.
3. Once you have that information, change is required. Otherwise, what use is it to collect all this information if you just say you support your field of membership without actually shifting your position to serve those people?

Bottom Line:

“Don’t be afraid to be different. If you do something different in a way people can see, it will draw more eyes…to your credit union.”

Tip of the Hat: To Andy LaFlamme, employee of Maine State Credit union, publisher of The CU Loop, and author of this post. His succinct articulation of many ‘Fundamental Theorems of Branding’ is simple and straightforward.

An employee of Maine State Credit Union says in his blog that “people should be able to see your credit union’s name and know if they are eligible for membership, without ever opening your membership brochure.” This is especially important, he adds, if you expand your field of membership.

So he takes issue with his employer’s choice to switch from ‘Maine State Employees Credit Union’ to ‘Maine State Credit Union’ when it got a community charter – in only two Maine counties:

“When we expanded our field of membership we dropped the ‘Employees’ from the name…who do we serve now? Looking at the name it would be easy to think we served the whole state, but I’d be wrong. We now serve the Kennebec and Somerset counties, but our name doesn’t tell me that. I have to search through the membership brochure to find out what towns are included in our coverage. I don’t like that.”

He also offers this advice: Credit unions shouldn’t drop the term “Credit Union” from their names (by replacing it with “Financial,” for instance). It robs them of a key point of distinction, he reasons.

Key Question: Do you know what your employees are saying about your organization online?

Bottom Line: Google Alerts. I found this post through my Google Alerts. If you set up the right Google Alerts, you can stay abreast of just about everything that concerns you and your organization. “Fine tuning” your Alerts to eliminate irrelevant garbage can be frustrating, however.