Michael Moszynski, chief executive of LONDON Advertising, discusses how wealth managers can really differentiate their brand from their peers.

Michael Moszynski is chief executive of LONDON Advertising, a global advertising agency he set up in 2008 with his long-standing creative partner Alan Jarvie. In his prior career Moszynski was a founding partner of M&C Saatchi, working across the agency’s network in Hong Kong, New York and the Middle East, in addition to London. He has worked for some of the world’s most prestigious brands, across various industries, and LONDON Advertising was in 2011 mandated to create a global advertising campaign for ABN AMRO Private Banking.

It may come as somewhat of a shock for those working in an industry built on the concept of client-centricity and personalised service, but studies suggest that clients are often disappointed with the level of service they receive from wealth managers. For example, a 2011 study by SEI Global Wealth Services entitled The Relationship Business: Expect the Unexpected found that 62 per cent of respondents believe that the industry fails to forge personal relationships with clients. This is despite the fact that the industry trumpets its devotion to client service as loudly as possible. Indeed, many a wealth management advertising campaign has been built around the concept of superior client service.

It may be the case that levels of client service are not quite where the industry would like them to be – thus calling into question the advisability of building an advertising campaign around this theme – but what is more to the point is that making such claims is probably already the wrong approach, according to Michael Moszynski, chief executive of LONDON Advertising.

“Protesting too much”

The problem, according to the veteran advertising executive, is that “service is an end result and not something you can claim.” And the same goes for value for money, as well as those time-honoured buzz words of integrity, trust and security, he said. Moreover, in his view, firms which highlight their integrity and trustworthiness too overtly may – at least on some level – be seen by clients as “protesting too much.”

However, as a recent reader survey carried out by ClearView Financial Media found, integrity and trust seem to be the brand values which firms are most keen to espouse, as well as being the values most prized by clients – at least according to the wealth management professionals who serve them. The trick is to communicate integrity without necessarily making an overt statement of it, according to Moszynski. And firms should also be aware that the brand positioning of their competitors will invariably be constructed along similar lines.

Really differentiating

More broadly, the problem with wealth managers’ branding and marketing efforts is that all too often the messaging is generic and tends to be about the bank itself, or its products or services, rather than what they can do for the client in their life. In short, firms are not differentiating themselves well enough – wealth managers are all clamouring to be heard by a notoriously hard-to-reach client segment, but what they are saying is broadly the same. Furthermore, it may be an unpalatable truth, but the reality is “you can’t really differentiate on product,” according to Moszynski.

What wealth managers need to be doing instead is focusing on standing out from their peers, and this necessitates a bravery that most firms aren’t willing to demonstrate, he said. Rather than repeating the mantras of trust, integrity, service quality and so on in the same way as their peers, forward-thinking wealth management houses should rather focus on what they are offering that is different.

Another trap which wealth managers fall into all too often is trying to convey too much and “hit all the bases” as it were. As might be expected, this can have a diluting effect which is as confusing to clients as it is detrimental to the strength of the message. “You can’t have too many messages… you have to work out the one thing you stand for and stick to it,” he said.

Building up brand equity

In Moszynski’s view, the vast majority of high net worth clients would not be able to recall the brand positioning statement or slogan of any wealth managers at all – many firms’ messages are, in short, forgettable. And yet a strong brand is an invaluable store of value which can offer a buffer during times of trouble, he notes.

A case in point here is UBS, which has been plagued by negative news in recent years, from its massive sub-prime losses, to its bruising tax evasion scuffle with the US authorities and the $2.3 billion unauthorised trading loss discovered at its investment bank in the summer of 2011. And yet despite these troubles, the UBS brand seems to have remained stronger than one might have imagined it would in the face of what must feel like a barrage of negative news.

What the Swiss banking and wealth management giant has got right is its investment in its brand over the years, the result of which is that while the brand may be “damaged, it is not critically wounded,” said Moszynski.

What brand does is to act “something like an insurance policy,” he explained, adding that British Airways is a good example from another industry of how a resilient brand can survive bad times.

British Airways has also been assailed by troubles, such as the debacle of thousands of items of lost luggage at Heathrow airport in 2008 and ongoing disputes with cabin crew. These sorts of things in their business can be “incredibly damaging”, Moszynski said, yet BA, like UBS, has shown remarkable brand resilience in the face of adversity. And this is because the airline made concerted efforts to build a strong brand some twenty to thirty years back, he said, demonstrating how investment in branding can have an invaluable cushioning effect.

The analogy Moszynski uses is a familiar one to those in his industry: “brand and the advertising are like the locomotive pulling the train along; you can actually decouple the locomotive and the train carries on running down the tracks… but if you don’t eventually attach it back to a locomotive it will grind to a halt,” he said.

“If you invest in the brand it will also help you when you do have a problem, as well as when you are actually trying to grow your business.”

To speak in financial services terms, this kind of investment allows firms to build brand equity which can yield dividends for decades.

Spend wisely

But investment in brand is not at all about “throwing money at the problem” Moszynski points out. “It’s not about the level of spend but rather the quality of the message,” he said, noting that in fact a restricted budget can be a good thing in terms of creating focus. Similarly, wealth managers don’t necessarily need huge marketing departments. “It’s not about big budgets and teams… it’s about analytical thought,” he said.

In fact, Moszynski is able to give a highly convincing example of how to build up a brand without breaking the bank in the shape of Mandarin Oriental, the luxury hotel chain.

Make it about the client, not the product: a case study from outside the wealth management industry

Mandarin Oriental looked to Moszynski and his creative partner to help with its aim of coming to be regarded as the best luxury hotel group in the world. They started working together in 1998 at a point when Mandarin Oriental only had seven hotels around the world.

“At that time all of the luxury hotels were trying to differentiate on their product, so hotel advertising tended to be a photo of a beautiful lobby, a magnificent swimming pool, a fantastic bed. We said, ‘well if I’m sending $500 a night on a hotel room I expect there to be a great lobby, a great pool and a comfortable bed’, and so we turned this round and made the advertising about the customer and not about the product,” explained Moszynski.

In the process of investigating the company, they found that Mandarin Oriental had a number of famous guests – particularly of the Bangkok and Hong Kong hotels. “All the world’s great and good had stayed there…and since there was a fantastic list of clients we decided to do a celebrity endorsement campaign,” he said.

Moszynski concedes that a celebrity endorsement campaign isn’t particularly unique, but he argues that the way that they executed Mandarin Oriental’s was.

“The problems with most celebrity endorsement campaigns are twofold: firstly they tend to cost a huge amount of money, and secondly people tend to remember the celebrity and not the brand being advertised,” he said.

The agency first took the bold step of saying that they wouldn’t be paying people to take part in the endorsement campaign. This, he concedes was quite a “leap in the dark”, but they were adamant that it wanted to secure celebrities who were “genuine advocates of the brand.”

Next, Moszynski’s creative partner, Alan Jarvie, came up with the idea of linking the campaign to the logo of the group - a fan – and to use the headline “He’s a fan” or “She’s a fan” alongside an image of the celebrity guest.

The going rate for a celebrity to take part in a global advertising campaign is anything up to $2 million dollars and would have, at that time, wiped out Mandarin Oriental’s whole media budget. Instead, they made the decision to donate $10,000 to a charity of the celebrities’ choosing, along with giving them ten nights' stay at Mandarin Oriental’s hotels for each year they were involved. 

“For celebrities such as Sigourney Weaver, Martin Sheen and Kevin Spacey, this is a tiny fraction of what they would usually secure from such an endorsement advertising campaign… to their credit Mandarin Oriental trusted us to make that happen and awarded us the business,” said Moszynski.

The advertising campaign began in 2000 and has now been going for almost twelve years, he continued, pointing out that over that period the campaign has helped Mandarin Oriental to grow its business by over 500 per cent.

The success of the campaign is testified to by the fact that Mandarin Oriental now has 44 hotels now open or under development. Furthermore, “the quality of the brand and the brand image is such that they are able to command a premium compared to their competitive set and they’ve also been able to diversify, for example into residences [this is where people buy residences in developments such as One Hyde Park in London which are then serviced by Mandarin Oriental]”, he said.

“This goes to show, that if you nurture your brand in the long term the return on investment and payback can be considerable,” Moszynski concluded.

For more information on the featured campaigns or to find out how LONDON Advertising can help build your brand visit www.LONDONAdvertising.com or contact Mike Bandar, head of new business, at MBandar@LONDONAdvertising.com or on 02078426825.