抱歉，本文中文版本正在制作中 The Swiss banking market is undergoing a process of structural change. And Raiffeisen has emerged as one of the winners. The bank, with ist century-old tradition, has consistently extended its range of services and is now Switzerland’s leading retail bank.
Raiffeisen is developing dynamically: formerly present mainly in rural districts, the group has increasingly established itself in towns and cities and now offers comprehensive and multi-faceted financial services. Today, it boasts three million customers.
Almost one in two bank customers in Switzerland entrusts Raiffeisen with his business. Its previous market presence was rooted in the past and failed to keep abreast of developments, making it impossible to present the bank’s current market position in a credible way. A bank’s visual presence is important, because its performance is hard to assess. And since money transactions are based on trust, a brand is needed that helps to cultivate that trust. Raiffeisen wanted to take an evolutionary step in the right direction that would help it to win over new customers and confirm its existing customers’ choice of bank.
At the same time, it wanted to give a signal. Raiffeisen’s new market presence focuses on the thing that best communicates its identity and is not interchangeable: its good name. It is around this good name that a comprehensive market platform has been created, ensuring integrated brand presence wherever Raiffeisen appears: on printed media, on its website, on bank machines and, last but not least, on the bank itself, of course.
The success of the strategy speaks for itself. The Raiffeisen brand inspires great confidence and has received far better image values than any other Swiss bank (source: LINK Institut für Markt- und Sozialforschung, 2007).
The old logotype/brand image stems from the 1970s and represents the history of the Raiffeisen bank. Ears of corn, keys, a honeycomb and strips of color refer to the banking group’s rural origins.
The new logotype succeeds without recourse to supplementary design elements. It confidently focuses on the thing that characterizes Raiffeisen better than anything else: its unique name. Typographic qualities and details, such as the typical warm red, lend the logotype its unique visual presence and ensure its high memorability.
A triangle perfectly captures the interplay of the design elements in the brand. It reflects the positioning of the Raiffeisen bank, which is renowned for its trustworthiness, dynamic approach and competence. The triangle also abstractly symbolizes the encounter between the customers and their Raiffeisenbank. The combination of two elements creates something new — a third element — at their place of intersection: a common path. “We prepare the path” is the Raiffeisen claim for years.
Raiffeisen has the densest ranch network of any bank in Switzerland. All in all, it has a total of over 1,000 branches: from the new urban building to the listed building in the old city district. Its outdoor visual identity must take into account all these different requirements while ensuring that the bank remains memorable at all times. A modular system of visualization elements does justice to the various architectural situations and, at the same time, supports the unaltered claims asserted by the Raiffeisen brand.
Integrated communication is a key success factor in long-term brand management. The guidelines on designing communication channels are an important instrument here.
For Raiffeisen, decentralized organization of the bank group is a unique challenge. On the one hand, Raiffeisen is determined to avoid following a number of different communications approaches simultaneously and diluting the brand as a result. On the other hand, brand implementation must be efficient and reasonably priced. An Internet portal that centralizes both the administration and the distribution is open to all staff members as well as external agencies. This allows them to access logo files, fonts, templates and other important basic design elements.
“We have created a market presence that is modern without being fashionable. It has the power to present Raiffeisen credibly on the market for a long time to come.”
Dr. Pierin Vincenz, CEO Raiffeisen Group