The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Rbs Marketing

Royal Bank of Scotland MD admits the brand was nearly dropped before renewed ad push

Author

By John McCarthy | Opinion Editor

September 24, 2016 | 3 min read

David Wheldon, the marketing director of the Royal Bank of Scotland has admitted the brand was nearly completely scrapped before it was switched out in England and Wales, with it now receiving a renewed push in Scotland.

RBS

Royal Bank of Scotland

Wheldon told the Times that it would have been “nuts” to drop the famous brand, however, it has constricted considerably. In May it emerged that the RBS branding will be stripped from 500 branches in England, Wales and Scotland.

Furthermore, RBS was to remain a corporate-facing brand with the consumer-facing entity changed to the longer Royal Bank of Scotland

Mr Wheldon said: “The brand that serves our customers is Royal Bank of Scotland, it is not RBS. When you are doing these things correctly you consider every option and evaluate them. We did look at [getting rid of it].

“What we saw when evaluating the options is an awful lot of our customers and clients love the Royal Bank, all the people who work in the front line are proud of the Royal Bank and we would have been nuts to walk away from that heritage and strength as it does give us a competitive advantage if we use it wisely.”

On the new Scottish drive in its marketing, he said: “It is a long while since we appear to have been proud of our Scottishness and we should be. This is the beginning of being proud to be Scottish again.”

In August the company’s chief executive Ross McEwan admitted that the brand “no longer has global aspirations”. It has been replaced by the NatWest division in England and Wales, while in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland the Ulster Bank brand is expanding.

Rbs Marketing

More from Rbs

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +