Background

Waterfield companies—including Waterfield Financial Services, Waterfield Technologies, Waterfield Bank, Affinity Financial Corporation, and others—provide banking and financial technology solutions. Among other areas of expertise, Waterfield is a pioneer in private-label, or affinity banking. Affinity banking allows non-banks like insurance companies, brokerage companies, affinity groups, and large employers to offer banking products to their customers or members with fewer regulatory burdens.

Issue

While Waterfield's ultimate goal was to increase deposits, the company's leadership realized that integral steps toward that goal included expressing why depositors and corporate clients should choose Waterfield over other banks, as well as clarifying the relationships between multiple customer-facing Waterfield entities.

Strategic Insight

Through a series of in-depth interviews and a comprehensive competitive audit, we determined that Waterfield's affinity-based business model was a strong point of differentiation, presenting an opportunity to make a true connection with depositors that other banks could not offer. As the banking equivalent of an OEM, however, Waterfield was relatively unknown among potential depositors. Our first priority, therefore, was to ensure that the brand instantly communicated Waterfield's reliability. We achieved this by highlighting the company's long history of success with a positioning statement rooted in the idea of "A Legacy of Trust." We then recommended a series of relevant and distinctive value propositions for Waterfield's affinity relationships to connect with depositors.

Result

A Legacy of Trust" was adopted as the Waterfield's tagline, and much of the positioning statement was converted to consumer-facing language for the brand's refreshed website--www.waterfield.com. The positioning statement also informed a logo redesign, which was applied consistently across all the consumer-facing Waterfield companies in a streamlined brand architecture model.

Richard Waterfield, Co-CEO of Waterfield Group, was delighted with the results of our work, stating, "We have, in our history, had the opportunity to work with a great many high quality firms. RiechesBaird is certainly among them. They are in the very top tier of high quality brand strategists. We feel lucky to have them in our corner."