The Point of Money

Brands, people and money.

As the US election and the first budget of a new UK government loom, the words of Bill Clinton’s electoral strategist James Carville are worth revisiting. “It’s the economy, stupid” sat at the heart of Clintons 1992 victory.

Carville understood that the economy wasn’t about GDP and interest rates but that our relation to it triggered deep seated emotions – insecurity, optimism, confidence – crucial in building a political campaign.

As with the economy, financial services are more emotional than they’d have you believe. For all the hard-nosed rationality of finance, people’s decision making is so often based on emotion and self-image. Behavioural Economics has comprehensively debunked the idea of ‘Homo Economicus’, the classical concept of a perfectly rational being making perfectly rational choices. So brands need to follow suit.

Brand is how financial services can reach beyond APRs, CDOs and ISAs and make a real connection that changes the disposition of audiences toward them. Yes, it is ‘the economy’, but it’s how we feel about it rather than a set of statistics that really counts.

The BrandOpus refresh of First Direct, banking’s original digital disruptor, expanded the brand’s visual identity system to include a fingerprint icon and a suite of illustrations of real people, denoting the personal touch and humanity that made them unique and is repeatedly borne out in best bank surveys. With a clear symbolic identity reflecting the brands difference in the world and a look and feel fit for a new digital generation, First Direct is back where it belongs.