Brand or bland awareness...where do you sit?

The term "bland awarenes" is an old marketing adage used to describe the sensation of boredom faced by consumers constantly bombarded by marketing messages which are ostensibly the same. In the world of fast moving consumer goods, it is exemplified by the inability of packaging to stand out on the supermarket shelf screaming "buy me".

Financial planners certainly do not suffer from bland awareness. In fact, financial planners generally have zero recognition in the mar-ketplace.

The term "bland awarenes" is an old marketing adage used to describe the sensation of boredom faced by consumers constantly bombarded by marketing messages which are ostensibly the same. In the world of fast moving consumer goods, it is exemplified by the inability of packaging to stand out on the supermarket shelf screaming "buy me".

Financial planners certainly do not suffer from bland awareness. In fact, financial planners generally have zero recognition in the mar-ketplace.

Stop anyone in the street and ask them to name a financial planning firm. AMP or even BT may come up. If you are lucky you might hear someone offer RetireInvest. Ask them about accounting firms on the other hand, and you may well find the entire Big Five memorised and maybe some second tier firms as well.

A marketing guru will tell you that the "top of mind recall" attrib-uted to the Big Five accounting brands is a recipe for success, at least in terms of revenue growth. Our front page story suggests you can't believe everything these gurus tell you. Sure, these firms have access to some of the best paid executives in the country. True also that these firms have established strong loyalty ties with these ex-ecutives through the high calibre auditing, tax and business services they provide to their companies.

But the Big Five have never really made a significant dent on the fi-nancial planning market. While the groups have offered a premium service with some of the finest advisers around, most have only a handful of advisers and some have exited the business altogether.

While the Big Five are yet to make it big in financial planning, quite the opposite is true for the Big Four. The traditional power houses of Australian banking are fast becoming the power houses of financial planning. Both Westpac and the Commonwealth have a fast growing army of financial planners and the ANZ and National are not far behind.

So why have the banks succeeded? Is it the brand? Is it their profes-sionalism and educational endeavours?

Banks in Australia certainly have brands. But would you want those brands? As they are more than aware, as a group, they are widely dis-liked by the community.

Far more important for the bank's efforts in financial planning is the way they have harnessed the power of two of the more sophisti-cated forms of marketing.

The first is the massive database of customers sitting on computers ripe to be mined for cross-selling opportunities, including the sale of advice. For example, the banks know when one of their customers is starting to think about what they will do for retirement. Out goes the letter letting that client know about the services the banks of-fer. No more beating the pavement and no more reliance on referrals.

The second is one we will be hearing much more about over coming years - the ability to deliver consistent service in a similar manner to a McDonalds store.

Whether or not McDonalds has the best tasting burgers is irrelevant. What is important is that when a customer strolls into a McDonalds store in downtown Melbourne or central Broome, they will be eating the same burger.

So whether you walk into a Westpac in Cooma, the type of advice of-fered is the same as that offered in Brisbane.

The banks are not the only ones who are trying the vanilla approach to the financial planning business, some of the most respected plan-ning groups in the country have also jumped on the bandwagon.

Love them or loathe them, those who fail to take heed of these devel-opments will do so at their own peril.