NELLIE MAE: BRAND DEVELOPMENT
| Industry: | Financial Services
| Client:
| Since 1982, Nellie Mae has helped millions of students and their families pay for college by providing a broad range of loans under the Federal Family Education Loan Program and privately funded loan programs.
| | Challenge: | Nellie Mae was facing an increasingly fragmented marketplace due to the expansion of lending services from banks and other financial institutions. Nellie Mae was becoming marginalized in an increasingly crowded and confusing industry.
Even though the company was a market leader, it lacked name recognition due to generic delivery of services. They had always relied on a direct sales approach, but because of the reconfigured market, this approach was failing and Nellie Mae was losing ground to better recognized and established financial brands.
| Intervention:
| The consultant assessed their situation through: - Conducting a complete marketing audit, competitive survey, and brand study
- Discovering that well recognized financial institutions were significantly cutting into Nellie Mae's business––largely because of the perceived value of their brands
- Recommending that Nellie Mae needed to reestablish themselves through brand development of their own
Based on the quantitative research and qualitative interviews of Nellie Mae management and prospects, the Wellesley Hills Group consultant: - Established a brand architecture that clearly differentiated Nellie Mae
- Highlighted Nellie Mae's distinct qualities, such as their:
- History
- Student loan focus
- Unique breath of services compared to the "everything to everyone" financial institutions they were competing against
- Emphasized Nellie Mae's leadership by establishing a brand architecture focused on thought leadership
- Designed a comprehensive communications plan focused on their new positioning
- Created a consistent, layered messaging system that seamlessly integrated the sales process with the marketing efforts of the company
| | Results: | After just one year of repositioning the firm and implementing the recommendations: - Requests for applications and information increased 55%
- The number of loans written increased 42% over the pervious year
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Client Comment “We can directly attribute our recent success to our brand campaign and the marketing program just launched.”
- Judy Stein, Research Analyst, Nellie Mae
