Branding and campaigns for fast tracking fintechs
Competition in the fintech space is intense. The pace of innovation and disruption may be record-breaking, but sustaining growth is tougher than ever.
The good news is that if you’re looking to develop sustainable competitive advantage, we can help.
As a leading fintech branding agency for ambitious and purposeful firms, we’ve been recognised twice as Marketing Partner of the Year at the prestigious British Bank Awards, as B2B Marketing Agency of the Year at the Drum Recommends Awards and shortlisted in multiple other categories.
For 29 years we’ve been building meaningful brands, crafting distinctive identities, and delivering strategic campaigns that drive measurable returns for our clients.
Whether you’re a dynamic start-up, a firm looking to scale quickly, or already well established, we’d relish the prospect of doing the same for you.
Good Stories, Better Told
In the fight for attention, salience and loyalty, when it comes to financial services branding, the right strategic foundation is what separates the leaders from the “thanks-for-comings”.
First, we’ll help you define a compelling positioning and an authentic narrative. One that goes beyond what you do and the pursuit of profit. Then we’ll create the verbal and visual assets that cut through the market noise and bring your story to life.
And that’s just the beginning. Every brand touchpoint, every experience, is an opportunity to reinforce and amplify what you stand for and why anyone should care.
We’ll craft insight-led campaigns and communications that make use of that opportunity, ensuring they contribute to building the value of your brand every time.
Brand definition
Work with us and you can be confident your fintech brand is built on the most robust strategic bedrock.
It all starts with defining your brand; bringing absolute clarity to what you stand for and why it matters.
Our proven methodology, honed over time, will guide and challenge you toward a focused and compelling brand position. And this will be the foundation for a brand story that’s both easy to understand and easy to articulate.
Brand discovery
A rigorous exercise in building understanding and gaining insight. Customer, competition, company, context – we leave no stone unturned.
Brand positioning
What do you want your customers to think when they think of you? The goal here is to bring absolute clarity to how you want your fintech brand to be seen.
Brand articulation
With your positioning defined and your story clear, the challenge is to tell it well – so well, others will want to tell it too.
This requires crafting your brand identity. The image your fintech brand presents to the world. The verbal, visual, and behavioural expression of who you are and what you stand for.
As an agency that’s been creating brand identities for ambitious fintechs for years, we’re well placed to help you build a story with transformative potential.
Verbal identity
What you say and how you say it is a huge and often overlooked opportunity to drive brand distinctiveness and build salience. We work with our clients to create brand languages that play as great a role in helping brands stand out as visual identity.
Visual identity
In conjunction with verbal identity, we’ll ensure your visual branding reflects and reinforces your brand positioning, communicating through distinctive assets (or brand ‘codes’) who you are and what you stand for.
Brand amplification
From integrated external campaigns to one-off internal communications, all present an opportunity to build salience, trust and brand equity.
And yet few organisations truly recognise this – fewer still in fintech, where a short-term tactical mindset is typically the norm. The key is balance.
We’ll make sure any customer experience fulfils not only its immediate marketing purpose, but also contributes to building long-term brand value.
Campaign strategy & creative
Dramatising the solution to your customers’ problem in the most engaging and compelling way.
Integrated marketing communications
Insight-driven, joined-up activity, where a multi-channel approach has impact.
Employer branding
Attracting the best employees and making sure they want to stay.
Internal communications
Realising the full potential of all your people pulling in the same direction.
We needed a multi-market campaign to build brand awareness of WTW Affinity as a leading end-to-end Affinity insurance solutions provider, helping us to shake off the image of an old-school player that specialises in broking. mark-making* did a fantastic job of hitting the brief. The Never Settle concept, and simple but bold articulation of ‘acceptable is unacceptable’, packed the punch I was looking for. The campaign is doing really well, in terms of both CPC and CTR, suggesting the creative is right on the money, and it was great fun to work on too.
Head of Marketing - Affinity
mark-making* really got under the skin of the challenge and our ambition. They worked hard to understand us as an organisation and our market, while also being sensitive to the requirements of the parent brand. They weren’t afraid to push back where necessary, but all in the name of getting the best possible result. The brand positioning, narrative and awareness campaign really do reinforce what Sanlam Investments UK stands for. Our independent attitude and robust backing are summed up in a way that’s easy to understand and memorable. This is just the start of our journey and we’re excited to see where it will lead.
Head of Marketing, Sanlam Investments UK
Got questions? Here are a few we’re most frequently asked.
What kind of fintech clients do you work with?
From disruptive start-ups and purposeful scale-ups, to established market-leaders, all our clients have one thing in common – a desire to make a positive difference as well as a return. If that sounds like you, then we’ll be a great fit.
What sort of budget will I need to see a return?
No two situations are the same. Our approach to brand creation and brand development is based on a proven and robust methodology. Whilst the process is consistent, the inputs and deliverables may be flexed as necessary to meet different needs and objectives. Whatever stage your organisation is at, we can support you, starting with an initial chat. And if we don’t think we can help, we’ll be sure to recommend alternatives.
How do I convince others in my organisation that we need to invest in brand?
That’s a common challenge. It’s still pretty rare for brand and marketing to have a seat at the top table. But every category leader knows the value of consistently investing in brand building from day one. If you’re having trouble being heard internally, you’ll need to pull together a compelling business case. Our financial services case studies are a great place to start and we’re always happy to help directly too. We often find the support of an external voice is enough to pique leadership interest and create an appetite for brand development.
How is mark-making* different from other agencies?
Our clients tell us that what makes us different as a fintech branding agency is a combination of our expertise and our culture. We’re the best at what we do and our goal is always to add value. We also recognise the day-to-day stresses our clients are often under, so our focus isn’t just on producing effective work – making our clients’ lives easy is something we’re proud to be known for too. It probably explains the exceptional longevity we have in our client relationships, some now spanning over 25 years.