Tekio
Identity Strategy for a Local Finance Company
Financiera En Comunidad
Identity Strategy for a Local Finance Company
Identity Strategy for a Local Finance Company
After realizing that the BOP segment in Mexico mistrusts banks, we developed the brand strategy for a financial institution devoted to microcredit for women, which in a close and daily basis encouraged them on starting microbusinesses up within the segment. We analyzed the beliefs, habits,languages and economic models akin to the BOP and delivered a proposal which reflected a model different to the traditional banking format, more horizontal and inclusive, inspired on elements from the Catholic Church and Mexican popular graphics. Under that premise, the communication languages were designed, as well as the master branch and the brand’s experience.
2. The Brief: Summarize the problem you set out to solve. What was the context for the project, and what was the challenge posed to you?The client had an institution consolidated in individual credits for the BOP, and intended to launch a new brand (En Comunidad, translated as In Community) focused on group microcredits. The new brand had to be differentiated from the first one through a new positioning since the latter would eventually disappear. It was sought that the brand reflected the claim it carries in its very name throughout the entire communication system. The branding must consider the design of both the physical space and the print communication.
3. The Intent: What point of view did you bring to the project, and were there additional criteria that you added to the brief?Group microcredits are a commodity for the BOP, which has an impact on the high number of competitors and the generic offering with low differentiation. Under this premise, we noticed that the brand had to operate as value added per se, that the brand’s experience were a differential that prompted the public’s approach and preference beyond branding.
The brand had to be familiar in order to insert among the people, respond to their everyday codes and behaviors, distance from an institutional model without sacrificing the formality and structure of a finance company.
The opportunity lay in finding an emotional connection with the segment, discovering the feelings and dreams that encourage people to ask for a credit. Therefore, we found out that not only the solution for the visual identity must be considered, but also the brand’s experience.
4. The Process: Describe the rigor that informed your project. (Research, ethnography, subject matter experts, materials exploration, technology, iteration, testing, etc., as applicable.) What stakeholder interests did you consider? (Audience, business, organization, labor, manufacturing, distribution, etc., as applicable)IMMERSION
We conducted an ethnographic study focused on discovering the relationship between people and microcredits, such as their needs, behaviors and everyday habits. We observed how they talked, their vocabulary, the way they explained things or situations to themselves, as well as the places they visited frequently.
• We observed the life dynamics in the communities where the brand would operate.
• Interviews were held with the service’s possible end users at the community.
• An Empathy Maps workshop was conducted with personnel from companies directly involved with the end user.
• The service was prototyped to observe the relationship between users and service, their concerns and motivations.
• A benchmark was rolled out regarding the competitors’ communication and offering.
FINDINGS
In a context in which men must invest more than 35% of their wages for commuting up to three hours to work, the women’s role in the economy dynamics is crucial to satisfy the family’s needs. Housewives invest time in developing a series of microbusinesses focused on producing an extra income. In the BOP, women have built an informal commercial network that comes to action when picking their children from school, going to church or during evening talks. We discovered the opportunity to foster starting a business up among the segment’s women.
Other elements that strengthened our insight:
• The financial dynamics are informal, inserted in everyday life and supported by the people’s word.
• We had to be part of the women’s individual and collective development.
• In Mexico, women from the BOP feel comfortable in low-uncertainty environments, following habits and building customs.
• The codes from the Catholic Church, multilevel businesses and itinerant markets are familiar to them and have significant influence on their behavior.
• People use sayings to explain complex concepts and are strong communication elements.
STRATEGY
The strategy consisted on building a brand that distanced from the formats of traditional financial institutions and behaved as a linking center.
We created En Comunidad, a brand that uses symbols similar to those of the Catholic Church to prompt commitment and trust (icons, prayers). On the other hand, it recovers Mexican popular sayings to convey with simplicity complex financial products and prompt a responsible financial culture.
Likewise, the strategy proposes strengthening bonds with the clients to achieve loyalty and profitability in the short and long term. Therefore, communication spaces were opened at branches so the community advertised products and services and thus foster local bonds.
BRAND
The brand recovers the Mexican social imaginary and includes its audience in building the messages:
• Uses sayings and Mexican popular wisdom for the communication.
• Recovers Mexican popular graphics, a code typical to the segment.
• Replicates the customs of the Catholic Church by producing icons, habits, commandments, etc.
• One resource is “fill in the blank” communication elements to be completed by the customers. This communication rules the experience at the branch.
We consider this project to be valuable since it represents a different approach to the Mexican BOP, with an open and inclusive vision that revalues its codes, behaviors and ways of communication. The proposal is focused on strengthening the women’s informal commerce networks so they become a real trigger for their individual and collective development. Thus the brand claim is supported in the generation of links that activate the community development. After one year of launching it, besides the group credits, workshops have been rolled out for the community with a social focus.
The brand En Comunidad approaches the audience respectfully, adapts to their habits with no impositions, transforms the complex financial communication into a language supported on Mexican sayings, popular ethics and the communities’ everyday behaviors.
6. Did the context of your project change throughout its development? If so, how did your understanding of the project change?Although the project’s objective was always the same –a brand of group credits for women in the BOP–, the focus and vision were constantly changed after the findings.
The project went from being an identity’s design to a more complex project focused on designing a strategy that included branding, experience, service, communication, up to the transformation of a generic offering into a real and sustainable differential value: links for development.
What started off as a usual identity project became so much more: an actual community center and set of tools to help a very specific segment of Mexican women. I admire the use of the users’ vernacular to relate to them, rather than to impose the usual fake finance stuff. It’s an audience that is not me, and for that I respect them, for not trying to make it be for a different user. – Susana