Beloved Brands

It's not often that brands get talked about by the general public. Because we do nothing but talk about brands in our industry, we wrongly assume that the public at large actually care about brands. I suspect for them, they simply exist and they don't get too worked up about them that often.

When they do talk about brands, it's usually for the wrong reasons. This is usually linked to the media too and that's no coincidence - London 2012, The Post Office and Monday are a few recent examples where our world has been put in the spotlight.

So it's always worth looking at a brand people are talking about and unusually in this case, it's a well-loved brand that will be disappearing completely this week - Bradford & Bingley. Bought by Santander a while back, B&B has been a victim not only of the financial crisis that's gripped the world, but also the march of the global brands.

It's always been a big financial player as long as I can remember and if you were working with them, it was second only to Halifax (and they've now gone too). They built a very powerful brand over time and also a fiercely loyal customer base that followed B&B from being a mutual building society into being a fully fledged bank.

In truth, the B&B brand has been gradually disappearing over the past couple of years, but it's been in the news this week as the signs are finally coming down to be replaced by the bright red Santander branding. From a brand point of view, I can see why Santander want their brand everywhere - the Spanish group have big ambitions to be a serious global financial player and they have to play all the same cards that HSBC would. 

But I can't help but feel slightly nostalgic for a time when there was some value in the local, trusted financial services brand and of thankfully, there are still a few of them around. 

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