Melbourne creative agency DPR&Co teams with international consulting firm to launch Brandtrust

Hot on the heels of its recent brand launch, Melbourne agency DPR&Co has teamed with leading international brand experience and enterprise architecture firm, FromHereOn, to launch Brandtrust – The Brand Authenticity Index.

The index is designed to explore the disconnection between a brand’s promise and the customer’s real experience, and the subsequent effect on brand health. The initial survey centres on the Australian “Big Four” banks.

DPR&Co Agency Principal Phil Huzzard said the partnership between a creative agency and consulting firm is something that had been under consideration for a long time: “The best consulting firms have unmatched visibility when it comes to brand and customer dynamics,” he said. “It is these insights, teamed with the ability to be part of end-to-end business transformations that really excite us.”

FromHereOn CEO Hugh Evans explained that the partnership behind Brandtrust was designed to help businesses ensure their big ideas translated effectively to their customers.

“When companies explore opportunities to innovate and lead, they invariably fail to inspire people and customers about the opportunities these changes enable,” he said. “But it takes an agency that really understands business to add value in this way. And that’s where DPR&Co is unique in our view.”

The interest in the inaugural Brandtrust index stems from a host of stunning findings, among which is that almost 70 percent of Australians believe their bank has lost touch with its customers and that almost half of them believe their bank would break its promise to them in the event of an adverse change to their employment.

“It’s clear that a number of recent events have impacted on the brands of the Big Four banks,” Huzzard said. “We think there are significant opportunities for the first bank that properly gets its brand promise to match its customer experience,” he said.

Evans stressed that the research was not about bashing the big banks. Indeed, the findings should be of value to them. “The ‘Big Four’ are doing a lot of things very well and are, in a sense, simply responding to the unique Australian regulatory environment in how they approach their markets,” he said. “Our survey is designed to be a constructive approach to helping organisations identify issues their standard NPS tracking won’t be showing up.”

Brandtrust will conduct quarterly surveys across a range of industries and market segments, simultaneously building a ranked index of organisations based on measures of brand authenticity.

The surveys are national to a sample of 1,000 Australians. The data is segmented by geography and socio-demographics.