Product leads, brand follows

A great brand conveys what makes you different.

📸 First, flashback to April when a robot wrote your copy of IMTW. This week, almost the entire issue has been taken over by AI because we all need to get familiar with it.

👉🏻 Now, read on to learn why:

① Customers care about the product or service they’re buying, not your brand.

② Your brand should distill your product differentiation.

③ Wealth managers need to add empathy to their list of skills.

④ Those best placed to know are wary of artificial intelligence.

⑤ AI for marketing should be used sparingly and with human oversight.

⑥ AI should be treated as if it had a subconscious.

⑦ Now more than ever, we need journalists of the highest calibre.

What's new

Wealth manager Wren Sterling rebranded this week, Money Marketing reports.

In short:

“Wren Sterling has unveiled a new brand for the national independent financial planning business. The refreshed brand came after research involving clients, employees and partners.”
“The new motto of the rebranded business is ‘invested in your financial success’ which it feels reflects the importance of investing in long-term client relationships.” Chief executive officer James Twining explained: ‘Our new brand is designed to better capture our core purpose of serving customers and their families over the long term. In particular, our research revealed that many clients requiring financial planning feel confused about the complexity of the market and ultimately, they are looking for clarity and the ongoing support of an expert to give them long-term reassurance’.”
“‘Our brand has been carefully designed to embody clarity, confidence and control. This is hugely important for our clients, but also for prospective firms and people looking to join Wren Sterling, so that we can ensure our cultures are aligned’.”

Why it matters

① Wren Sterling wasn’t the only company to rebrand this week. Peloton did the same. In both cases, I was reminded of how devilishly hard such things are to pull off. And how little anyone outside the company concerned cares. There’s an enormous amount of time and money invested in brands but the crushing, unpalatable truth is that customers are not loyal to brands and really only care about the product or service they’re buying.

Having rebranded a wealth management business myself, I feel for the team at Wren Sterling. When we did it, I recall settling on - literally, word for word - the same description Twining provides above: our clients, we wrote, want “clarity, confidence and control.” What a surprise. The reality is stark: clients care about only two things when it comes to wealth management: performance and people. They want to feel confident that you’re going to protect and grow their money - and they want to enjoy the service they receive, that typically means the people they’ll interact with. That’s really it. So how can you possibly differentiate?

Wren Sterling looks and sounds like every other wealth manager, because they’ve all done the same research, read it the same way, and sought to reflect it in their positioning.

What to do about it

Take action

Instead of reading the same research everyone else has, instead of clamouring to communicate that you can provide what the research tells you customers want, ask yourself a simple question: what is different - and better - about what you do/sell? What differentiates your product?

You might think that I’m contradicting my previous advice to you about how important it is to differentiate yourself by thinking in terms of client needs, not your features - but I’m adding to it.

② Help your customer choose you by adopting a brand that conveys what’s different about your product. Think of the world’s most valuable brand: Apple. They sell complex technology products, they have a product portfolio meticulously curated to meet the needs of a wide range of customers, but their brand conveys just one thing: what makes all of them different to their competitors. In their case, that’s elegance and simplicity. Would customers have said that’s what they want from a phone if you asked them? Likely not. They would have talked in terms of screen size or computing power. Yet they return to the brand’s products again and again because they’re more elegant and simple than the competition. A great brand conveys what makes you different.

Get help

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

Why AI will never replace adviser/client relationships

③ Wealth managers need to add empathy to their list of skills.

Louis Williams. Source: Professional Adviser, 23 May 2023

“The progress of artificial intelligence in recent years has led to the increase of digital advice within [wealth management] yet 73% of respondents had a preference for advice from a human, with 71% concerned that robo-advice would not be appropriate for their financial needs.”
“There are two major factors that may lead to these findings, firstly, a robo-adviser will have a limited understanding of a client's needs and objectives which may result in solutions that are not entirely appropriate. Secondly, they cannot hold a client's hand and provide comfort during difficult periods, whether due to drops in the market or personal life events, there is a need for having someone to talk with who can listen and advise.”
“Whilst we can use AI to manage client data, reduce costs, increase productivity, and potentially help us recognise emotions, it will never meet our client's needs and become emotionally intelligent. The ways in which we can become more emotionally intelligent such as through active listening, paying attention to our own thoughts and feelings, engaging in reflective practice, and asking for client feedback, cannot be applied to AI.”

TECHNOLOGY

Google boss: AI is ‘too important not to regulate’

④ Those best placed to know are wary of artificial intelligence.

Sundar Pichai. Source: CityAM, 23 May 2023

“Artificial intelligence is too important not to regulate and the US and EU must work together to develop ‘robust’ rules to guide the growth of the powerful new technology, Alphabet’s boss Sundar Pichai said [this week].”
“‘Developing policy frameworks that anticipate potential harms and unlock benefits will require deep discussions between governments, industry experts, publishers, academia and civil society,’ he said.”
“Pichai, who has admitted having ‘sleepless nights’ over the nightmare AI could pose, added that international co-operation will be crucial when it comes to drawing up these new AI regulations.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

What financial marketers need to know about AI

⑤ AI for marketing should be used sparingly and with human oversight.

“There are four key areas AI can help financial marketers:
- Predictive analytics
- Personalised customer experiences
- Risk assessment
- Marketing automation”
“Here are five ways in which artificial intelligence can benefit your brand and finance business:
- Improved customer engagement
- Increased efficiency
- Enhanced targeting and segmentation
- Faster decision-making
- Greater cost savings”
“Here is what you need to look out for when using AI:
- Data privacy and security
- Bias and fairness
- Transparency
- Human oversight
- Skills and expertise”

WILDCARD

Does AI have a subconscious?

⑥ Though not alive, AI should be treated as if it had a subconscious.

“The chatbots do not possess intrinsic agency or desires. They are trained to predict and reflect the preferences of the user. They also lack embodied experience in the world, including first-person memories, which is part of what we mean when we talk about being conscious or ‘alive’.”
“I do believe that AI has a subconscious. In a sense, they are pure subconscious, without a genuine ego lurking behind their personas. We have given them this subliminal realm through our own cultural repositories, and the archetypes they call forth from their depths are remixes of tropes drawn from human culture, amalgams of our dreams and nightmares. When we use these tools, then, we are engaging with a prosthetic extension of our own sublimations, one capable of reflecting the fears and longings that we are often incapable of acknowledging to ourselves.”
“The goal of psychoanalysis has traditionally been to befriend and integrate these subconscious urges into the life of the waking mind. And it might be useful to exercise the same critical judgment toward the output we conjure from machines, using it in a way that is deliberative rather than thoughtless. The ego may be only one small part of our psyche, but it is the faculty that ensures we are more than a collection of irrational instincts—or statistical patterns in vector space—and allows us some small measure of agency over the mysteries that lie beneath.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, on generative AI and journalism:

Roula Khlaf. Source: LinkedIn, 27 May 2023

“It is my conviction that our mission to produce journalism of the highest standards is all the more important in this era of rapid technological innovation. That is why FT journalism in the new AI age will continue to be reported and written by humans who are the best in their fields and who are dedicated to reporting on and analysing the world as it is, accurately and fairly.”

Don’t settle for marketing.

Strive for InMarketing: innovate, interact, influence.

Wishing you a productive week,

P.S. I was at a 50th birthday party last night at Au Grand Forestier, a great restaurant nestled on a pond in a leafy suburb of Brussels. If you’re ever in the neighbourhood, I recommend it to you.