Marketing communication: principles and practice

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convinced that emotion can be conveyed well through impersonal media such as direct mail.
Royal Bank of Scotland has a strong business identity, but how can the success of the RBS
Advanta card be explained, when recall of the name and logo is low and the brand value is
weak on the emotion dimension? Just as did First Direct (which both Tim Lewis and Hawkins
Innovation Network worked for at this critical time), who everyone ‘assumes’ spent a lot of
money on ‘above the line’ advertising to create a brand and build their customer base, RBS
Advanta did the same. They ensured that every mailing went towards creating a brand as
well as establishing response. First Direct relied almost solely on direct mail and favourable
‘word-of-mouth’ advertising from their satisfied customers from 1991–95 to build their brand.
RBS Advanta deliberately set out to build a brand that was ‘straightforward; open; honest;
modern’ – part of the new world of finance and not part of the ‘establishment’; one that was
consumer friendly. RBS Advanta invested substantial amounts of both time and effort in
internal brand seminars with continuous input from their agencies.
What next? Can a brand be built further on the Internet, as Prudential are trying to do with
the Egg brand, with supporting traditional media (TV, press, public relations, etc.). Egg is
undoubtedly positioned now as the ‘high-tech’ product (although launched as a ‘direct’ brand
rather than as an Internet brand – they even recruited the original brand team from First
Direct to do this). Once they had launched Egg, they used the Internet as part of their
recruitment strategy. They attracted people at a lower cost through this medium and
concentrated on it. They might also have noted that, even though they were ‘giving away
money’ at rates that could not be sustained, there was an amazing effect going through to
their share price. With a preferential rate available only to customers who use the service
online, Prudential intended to control the extent of service uptake. Despite this, by June 1999,
Egg was attracting over 1,000 new customers each day. The Internet continues to develop
as an alternative communication and commerce channel. Barclays’ online service has signed-
up around 10,000 customers each week since launch, making it the largest online banking
service in the UK. 
Goldfish and Marbles are the ‘wacky’ cards – the latter is promoted as the way to pay for
purchases on the Internet. The former has targeted transactors through an integrated
marketing communication programme. The Goldfish brand was designed by British Gas
(in association with HBC, as it then was), as a loyalty device against the Government’s heavy
regulatory push which started to empower competition. The Government’s stated policy was
to drive the British Gas share of the market from ‘100 per cent’ down to 16 per cent. British
Gas did everything they could to prevent this, including building the Goldfish brand. It was
only with two months to launch that the Data Protection Registrar refused them permission
to use their customer database for direct mail. The major ‘attraction’ of a Goldfish Card was
– and is – a discount on your British Gas (Centrica) gas bill. The Goldfish concept was
designed to capture consumer imagination and to portray personality through the picture
of a goldfish and the heavy promotion of advertising campaigns (television, press, and direct
mailing, including Billy Connolly as the celebrity face). By May 1999, some 920,000 cards
had been issued as part of a widening portfolio of financial products.
For futher information see:
www.rbsadvanta.co.uk
www.cardforum.com
www.goldfish.com
www.hawk-in.co.uk

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