Why We Rebranded Union Bank Without Help From Nigerian Agencies- Landor

Riaan Muller Senior Consultant, Southern African Representative, Landor has disclosed that his agency executed the Union Bank rebranding project without any help from a Nigerian agency, despite having limited prior working experience in Nigeria.

The American agency, with offices in 21 countries of the world including South Africa told MARKETING EDGE in an exclusive e mail response that the final outcome of the project was the result of an elaborate consumer research and insight gathering carried out by Landor with help from research consultants knowledgeable about the Nigerian market.

“It was very much a team effort, but completed without the help of a local agency. We wanted to ensure that the campaign was 100 percent in-line with the new brand strategy, so we took this upon ourselves to execute the brand campaign ourselves,” Muller said.

Speaking further on the rebranding project Muller disclosed that Landor’s relationship with Union Bank started in 2014. “Their turn-around programme was well on-track by the time we came on board. As part of our activities, we also embarked on quite robust consumer research and insights gathering.

“We partnered with a very experienced research consultant (experienced not only in terms of general depth, but a very thorough experience of working in Nigeria, with Nigerian clients in both Lagos and Abuja). This allowed us to have some very good insights into the market, the banking industry and the existing and potential future customers of Union Bank, and even competitor banks.

“Developing a brand, while we bear in mind the physical geography of the entity, really needs to be world-class and global in terms of the eventual result – and that is exactly the approach we took with Union Bank. Learning from banking clients and banking trends – not only in Nigeria, but from all over the world – helped us to develop a very modern and global new brand for Union Bank.”

Muller also added that the launch of the new brand, from a visual perspective, is obvious through the elements that could be seen on the streets of Nigeria. “ The messaging and the launch campaign nuances were a bit more challenging, and while we spent a lot of time to ensure that our campaign is not only relevant to the new brand strategy, but also relevant (and colloquial enough) to the man on the streets of Nigeria, much of this ‘messaging testing and editing’ was done by the client at Union Bank themselves,” He concluded.