HBF achieves premium brand return

Western Australia’s dominant health insurance player HBF has shot up the ranks from fifth position last year to capture the prized number one spot in the WA Business News list of our state’s most recognised brands.

HBF knocked the state’s iconic bank, BankWest, from the top position, with Wesfarmers owned hardware retailer Bunnings hanging on to second place.

While HBF continues to diversify into new fields such as financial services and life insurance, HBF marketing manager Kate Wright told WA Business News the brand also needed to be updated to reflect the expansion of its services.

“Historically the HBF brand has retained a territory of ‘professionally caring’, with Ted symbolising the emotional, dynamic and this caring aspect, which is an attractive attribute in the health insurance sector,” she said.

“However, the view was that as HBF diversifies to help keep the pressure off premiums, there was a need to consider a way to retain the sentiment behind this attribute but evolve it to one that is multi – dimensional and more appropriate, particularly as we diversify into areas like financial services.”

Ms Wright said the challenge faced by the HBF brand was in providing support to all HBF activity and provide a strong emotional cache reflecting the group’s values and vision.

“Developing a new brand entity over the next few years is the next stage of the planned evolution of the brand,” she said.

The new brand proposition centered around HBF as a Western Australian not-for-profit mutual organisation with a strong member focus, actively contributing to the state.

“The brand essence is at the centre of the proposition,” Ms Wright said. “It drives the achievement of several objectives of clearly supporting the brand positioning, providing a strong context and support for all areas of business from health insurance to financial services and beyond; providing reassurance to members; and reflecting the vitality and passion of the business into the brand.”

It appears HBF isn’t the only company in the top 10 which was making or has recently made changes in its core branding strategy.

Hardware retailing giant Bunnings, which has consistently branded its core pillars of biggest range, lowest prices and good service, has adopted a more personal approach to its advertising.

The Brand Agency, which has three clients in the top 10 and has held the Bunnings account for a number of years, established its Melbourne office as the company expanded its scope into the eastern states.

Since Christmas, the Bunnings Warehouse concept has witnessed the evolution of a new brand strategy, resulting in the company dropping its adverts using Lionel, the line illustration man.

The Brand Agency director in charge of the Bunnings account, Neil Cumming, told WA Business News the agency conducted an overview of the Lionel drawing last year.

“Over the years [Lionel’s] role was reduced as was his relevance in the branding,” he said. “We wanted to push the service side of things a little more in the branding for Bunnings.”

Mr Cumming said the new advertising, which features Bunnings employees, focused more so on the core pillar of service while still incorporating the price and range pillars of the Bunnings brand through the dialogue.

“It was also about bringing a certain sense of credibility to the brand,” he said.

However, according to one survey participant who wished to remain anonymous, the Bunnings campaign required its shop assistants to fulfill its promise of good service.

“Experience would tell me that they are not delivering on this promise,” said the survey participants.

“If they don’t back-end it then it might create a problem because your expectations are already up from the advertising.”

Western Australia’s state lottery LotteryWest, which rounds out the top three most recognised brands, is also in the process of launching a new campaign, according to Lottery-West spokesman Andrew Walton.

“The position line that we’ve now adopted for the next couple of years is everyday people win,” he said. “The everyday has a deliberate double meaning, we’re talking about everyday people and everyday, people are winning.

“So what we’re adopting is a style of advertisement showing the different sectors that we are supporting [like] everyday sports win, everyday arts win…”

Mr Walton said the new advertising ties together the product and the community benefits associated with playing lotto which, in the past, were separate advert streams.

“One of the strengths that we feel for our brand is that it does have enormous good words attached to it, which we worked hard to achieve,” he said. 

“It’s absolutely got to do with the fact that we are giving funds back to the community and we wanted to use that in our branding strategy.”

RAC remains in fourth position, however BankWest, which was placed at the top of the table last year, has slipped to fifth position with survey responses highlighting the iconic bank was loosing sight of its Western Australian roots as it expanded into the eastern states.

 Both the West Coast Eagles and The West Australian remained in the same positions from last year in sixth and seventh positions respectively, while Rick Hart remained in ninth position. Wesfarmers Group was a big mover this year, climbing up the rankings eight positions to take out the 10th position.

An interesting aspect to this year’s survey was the emergence of a resource company in the top ten with Perth-based oil and gas giant Woodside Petroleum claiming eighth position.

Marketforce chairman and CEO John Driscoll told WA Business News that Woodside’s position within the top 10 companies was no surprise as it epitomised Western Australia’s booming economy.

“Its new premises [in the heart of the central business district] has clearly positioned Woodside’s brand as a Western Australian icon,” he said.

It is a view echoed by Woodside corporate communications manager Rob Millhouse, who said the fact they were one of Australia’s top 10 listed companies put them in people’s minds.

“We are involved in Australia’s largest resources projects,” he said. “We have $8 billion in capital projects. Therefore this has an influence on the Western Australian economy and the Western Australian society in general.”

According to Mr Millhouse, the company’s strength as a recognised brand didn’t revolve around the amount of advertising expenditure, with less than $200,000 spent on advertising, excluding job advertisements.