Case Study for Agency
03-1014812-478

From Name to Brand to Market: State Street Global Advisors

Background
State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of
State Street bank, invented the ETF category (a basket of securities
that trades like a stock). It also created and manages the category
leader, SPDRs.

The problem was that no one knew it. Despite 14 years of heavy
spending, there was hardly any recognition of State Street Bank or SSgA
as innovators, an entity or worse, of the link between them and any of
their market-leading ETFs.

With the category exploding and financial advisors and consumers seeing
the benefit of ETFs over other investment options, SSgA needed to stop
thinking like a manufacturer and instead define and take ownership of
its corporate and product brands.

Challenge
Our challenge was to simplify the complex: develop a brand architecture
that identified and leveraged the most powerful brands in State
Street’s arsenal, link those brands to a State Street entity and then
go to market with a lasting, benefit-based brand platform in a category
fast becoming a commodity.

Insight
Our first step was to conduct global research to learn which State
Street corporate, divisional or product brand names (seven in total)
had the highest awareness, positive association and credibility among
the target.
- We learned that while awareness of corporate brand State Street and
divisional brand SSgA was very low, the State Street brand, was seen as
being “prestigious” and “trustworthy,” important attributes in the
financial services industry.

Concurrently, we conducted global research to learn what was the
highest un-met category benefit.
- Typical of the financial services industry, competitors universally
focus on product features “trades like a stock”, “we have more ETFS” or
“our ETFs cost less.”
- Our belief was that these features, while powerful today, would
become generic category benefits as the market matured.

Solution
Brand Architecture: Our recommended brand architecture reduced the
number of product brands from four to one, landing on SPDR. And
corporate brands from three to one, choosing State Street over the SSgA
divisional name.

Brand Platform: Next, we recommended an emotion versus product or
feature-based brand platform: Precision.
- Precision works on two levels. First, it describes how
well-constructed State Street’s ETFs are, thereby suggesting product
superiority.
- Second, Precision is what investors look for in any investment: a
vehicle that precisely matches their strategy.

Go-to-Market Strategy: we started with top-down communications. These
efforts introduced the Precision platform and inextricably linked it to
State Street and SPDRs.
- But we also needed to sell individual product ETFs such as Gold or
MidCap. So we developed bottom-up programs for individual products and
used them as support for how precise State Street SPDRS are.

Media: We developed a logo, corporate identity materials, TV, radio,
print, outdoor, web, digital, collateral and internal communications
supporting brand and product efforts in the US and abroad.

Results
In the most recent tracking study, the Precision brand platform – after
only eight weeks in the market – is resonating with the State Street
target.
- 61% of the target view precision as an important deciding factor in
choosing an ETF.
- 47% of the target found our tagline “Precise in a world that isn’t”
to be very appealing.