Home Building Society underwent a million-dollar brand overhaul late last year to revitalise its 58-year-old image.
The new logo, branch fit-outs, staff uniforms and an advertising campaign featuring its new brand icon, BMW’s mini coopers, has paid dividends for the building society, according to Home’s manager manufacture and marketing, Terry Jones.
“We’re now the number one non-bank for unprompted awareness,” Mr Jones said.
“Before the initial campaign that ran from September to November [last year] we had a 19 per cent unprompted awareness. Now it is 34 per cent.
“We’re are at record levels of lending so we are appealing to a younger audience but we haven’t alienated the older customers. Our deposits have grown 20 per cent.”
The company’s advertising agency, Marketforce, provided the strategic and creative planning and direction.
Marketforce strategic planning director Debra Shorter said research showed Home had strong brand values that had a friendly and trustworthy message, and it was important to retain those.
“We wanted to continue to look at Home as a small organisation that was friendly and flexible but added contemporary values, fun and innovation, and new services like Internet banking so it would appeal to a younger market,” she said.
The success of the brand make over has placed Home third in WA Business News’s top emerging brand list.
But, celebrating its 58th year in business this week, Home also rated highly as one of WA’s oldest and successful brands.
While many of WA’s oldest brands have undergone subtle changes over time to keep the brand fresh, Home went unchanged for decades.
“We did some research which told us that the brand was tired,” Mr Jones said.
“Half our customer base was over 55 years of age and we needed to attract a younger market to products like our mortgages but to do that with out alienating our older market.
“We wanted to give the brand a competitive edge with something cheeky and innovative that had appeal across the audiences.”