Legacy branches: are they breaking down your brand?

• Position: Marketing News

It happens all the time. As a bank expands its branch network, it introduces a new, more modern retail strategy and design in its new branches. But, in an effort to save costs, the legacy branches are left unchanged.

This is a mistake, according to Kevin Blair, the president and chief executive officer of NewGround, St. Louis, a strategic marketing, design/build and employee development firm for the financial services industry.

"Financial institutions are allowing their legacy branches to undermine their overall brand," he observes.

Legacy branches communicate the way banking use to be, but don't reflect the bank's current retail delivery, he says. Legacy branches undermine the brand in several ways: They grow inconsistencies in the look and feel of the brand, the employee culture, and customer service.

The solution is to retrofit legacy branches to include the same retail delivery strategies as the newer branches, Blair says. For the same cost of building a new branch at a new site, a number of legacy sites could be updated and renovated.

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"A branch network should share a cohesive retail delivery strategy," he notes...