Is your brand a field full of cows?

You might like to get to the useful stuff quickly. So before we dive into the webinar, here are the key points you can take away and put to work immediately.

• Confused people say no. Clarity helps them say yes
• Being boring is costly. #BeLessCow (I’ll explain below)
• Storytelling is not decoration. It is commercial
• Clients don’t buy on numbers alone. They react to emotion
• Clear brands grow faster and exit higher. 20-30% higher

But if you’d like to know more about what we covered in our session, here’s the story.

What’s it all about?

P1 Investment’s Time & Money is a brilliant webinar series, and we were delighted to be handed the mic for an hour. We talk about branding all day anyway. For the P1 audience we wanted to talk about message clarity and the emotional side of financial services. It was a chance to share what we see all the time. Firms struggling to stand out in a consolidating, increasingly algorithm- and AI-driven market.

We called the session, Selling the Sizzle. The sizzle is how you make people feel, and how much you stand out. Because if everyone looks the same, sounds the same and says the same thing, clients stop paying attention. And you won’t grow if no one’s paying attention.

We wanted to help advisers do something about that.

Confused minds say no

People don’t buy what they don’t understand. If your brand is vague or confusing, the brain rejects it. Not out of spite, but out of self-preservation. Clarity is a survival mechanism.

To demonstrate the point, we talked about the Netflix effect. Once a bold disruptor, now a library of familiar content shaped by data rather than creativity. Safe but bland. A sea of “gourmet cheeseburgers”, as the Guardian put it.

Financial services is heading the same way. Consolidation and AI have created a landscape where many firms are beginning to look interchangeable. Which means the ones who choose clarity, originality and proper brand work will stand out all the more. And standing out is an enormous advantage.

The cost of being dull

We showed a piece of research that’s fun at first glance, but worrying if your business relies on marketing. A bunch of ads were being tested, with participants asked to score videos based on how each made them feel. Among the ads was a video of some cows standing in a field doing absolutely nothing.

The cows outperformed three quarters of the ads. #BeLessCow

If you want to be remembered, you have to stop blending in. Not by being loud, but by being unmistakably you. Your brand should feel human, specific and confident. Not generic. Not corporate beige.

Storytelling works because money is emotional

The Budget happened to be around the time as our webinar session, which gave us a useful reminder. Every time a budget lands, advisers experience a wave of client contact. Those clients are not reacting to spreadsheets. They are reacting to the story they believe the numbers tell about their future.

Money has always been emotional. Brands that understand that outperform those that do not.

This is why we use StoryBrand principles with advisers. When you frame your client as the hero and position yourself as the guide, you tap into the emotional pattern people naturally respond to. It creates recognition, trust and momentum.

Feedback from the session

The comments we received afterwards were encouraging. Advisers said the session helped them understand why clarity and narrative work so well in financial services. We also posed a series of questions during the webinar, to find out what people thought about their own brands? Cows or clarity?

At the start 83% of attendees rating their brand clarity as a 3 or 4 (out of 5). comfortable, but not super confident.

At the end we asked the audience the same question, just to see if we’d moved the needle. This time respondents rated themselves as 1, 2 or 3.

That might sound negative. But it’s actually progress. Identifying a problem is the first step in solving it. Speak of which…

It’s an excellent time for a Brand Scan

We’ll take a close look at your brand and website, considering your messaging, visuals, and how well it all lines up with what your clients need. It’s a really good way to understand where things are working, where they’re not, and what could be holding you back.

You need only drop us a line – or if you prefer a chat, use our online booking tool – and we’ll get the ball rolling.