Helping FinTech Soldo’s familiarity fly by implementing Competitive Creativity®

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Familiarity is the biggest driver of consideration. So, let’s first try and familiarise you with the concept of Competitive Creativity^®, otherwise logic says you won’t consider it. Then we’ll explain how we introduced it into the Soldo spend management brand, enhancing their awareness, consideration and sales against their competitive set.

Competitive Creativity^® in a nutshell

Competitive Creativity^® is the deliberate sequencing of imaginative brand-building devices to generate demand, followed by systematic creative devices to capture demand efficiently. This is not a reframing of brand + performance, it’s a deeper understanding of the kinds of creative devices to deploy in a commercial sequence along the buyer journey. It’s not just a creative philosophy; it’s a growth efficiency model. You’ll find a more detailed narrative of the behavioural economics that underpin Competitive Creativity® here. When we start working with any brand, we complete a Competitive Creativity^® analysis against three nominated competitors, to picture the balance of imaginative versus systematic creative devices they are both deploying and competing against. A map of the marketing battlefield (that’s in the public domain). The matrix maps creative devices along two axes:

·       Memorable ←→ Forgettable (their relative ability to encode memory)

·       Ownable ←→ Unownable (their ability to become distinctive brand assets)

In late 2023 Soldo had prompted awareness of 8%. Our analysis revealed an overreliance on systematic creativity emanating from the product – low memory-encoding design language operating as front-line advertising. This was the result of a partially adopted rebrand from a respected branding agency, further evolved by an internal design team. Internally the Soldo logomark was polarising. But our analysis was that the logomark was their most distinctive branding asset with the highest chance of building familiarity. What it needed was support from more imaginative creative assets.

But how did Soldo compare against its three nominated competitors? Again the asset analysis is looking outside-in as any prospect would to build familiarity. Pleo, the pink protagonist

Pleo ranked top for imaginative creativity with its distinctive cartoon-like illustrative style and pink colour palette. This visual approach was backed by a significant investment in outdoor advertising. Pleo was certainly hard to miss, but perhaps equally hard to like too. Within their marketing comms there was also a clear attempt to create the brand-as-verb construct through the call-to-action: Pleo it. Hoover it, Google it, Xerox it – all came from the audience first, not promoted by the brand, but it’s an admirable attempt to create a distinctive brand asset through language. Pleo had the biggest challenger vibe of the four brands compared, but this populist cartoon-style approach, which might resonate with SMBs, can also have a detrimental effect if trying to market upwards to an Enterprise audience. Soldo needed to target both audiences so we need to think about imaginative assets that blended populist and premium aesthetics.

Spendesk. Spending their way satisfactorily.

Spendesk were also spending big on outdoor media to gain familiarity. It’s an effective tactic but an expensive one too, particularly if your creative approach doesn’t capture the imagination. Spendesk's rather generic ‘Super-satisfying spend management’ campaign, with accompanying business meets-holiday-relaxed imagery, walked the tight rope between confusion and cliché. The bigger issue though was recessive branding. Without any truly distinctive brand assets deployed would audiences know it was Spendesk? Across their owned digital real estate the systematic creativity of purple colour palette and B2B category vector illustration characters told a cohesive story. But it didn’t appear to link visually with the high-profile photography based outdoor campaign. The sequencing of Competitive Creativity^® is important, but so is the cohesive creative flow between the two. You could have visited the Spendesk website having seen the advertising and wondered if it was a totally different brand.

Payhawk. Hoping it pays to look professional.

Payhawk had deployed their systematic creativity approach from the product straight into their advertising. Their reductive corporate design language was at least consistent, with an equally frugal approach to copy. Payhawk had zero distinct imaginative creativity assets to speak of. You can grow brand familiarity without them, it’s just going to cost you ten times as much in paid media to bombard audiences into noticing you are present, and then considering what you have to offer. Injecting imagination into Soldo.

Having got a top-level picture of Soldo’s competitive set, we started filling Soldo’s imaginative asset armoury. After repositioning Soldo with the line Liberate finance. Accomplish more, we resisted internal design team pressure to change the rainbow-coloured logotype, primarily because of its high distinctiveness. A suite of existing black-red-orange-yellow design grads were unified and given new metaphorical meaning – a new dawn in spend management. Meaning helps memory creation.

Then we created a hummingbird brand character that echoed the spectrum of colours within the logotype to symbolise Soldo-enabled businesses – liberated from the shackles of reactive spend management and able to accomplish more. The hummingbird was crafted in CGI to feature film standard, elevating it to premium enterprise feel, while bringing populist emotion and memorability to the brand. The Lloyds Bank black horse for the FinTech generation.

In addition, a metaphorical visual brand world was created, where Soldo brought the light and colour to illuminate the darkness. Representative of the real-time visibility and detail which the Soldo platform brings to the finance and procurement communities. A full spectrum of imaginative creative assets to dovetail into the systematic creativity that existed in the Soldo platform itself.

These assets were then deployed across demand generation activity from digital to direct mail to experiential, telling the Soldo story across multiple touchpoints. There was no expensive spend on outdoor advertising like Pleo and Spendesk. Just consistent use of the hummingbird as a motion and static asset across every brand touchpoint.

Over the next eighteen months Soldo's prompted brand awareness rose by 625%, net promoter scores increased by 36% to be category leading, and Demand Gen pipeline increased by 252%, with 90% net new prospects. This is the power of imaginative creativity to increase brand familiarity and drive business growth consequently. We continue to work with Soldo to add to its imaginative creative assets, with new musical expressions being added to the marketing armoury this year. Soldo sets a gold standard in embracing emotive, imaginative creativity through consistent use of a brand character, brand world, metaphorical imagery and now musical executions.

This year a new UX is being rolled out across the Soldo platform - systematic creativity against a predominantly white background. This is in contrast to Soldo's dark, imaginative, metaphorical brand world. The narrative logic is that once you've reached the Soldo website, you are becoming ever-more illuminated, leaving behind the dark ages of spend management. But the reality is that white creates a cleaner, simpler UX. In this owned brand environment systematic creative runs the show. But don't forget it was imaginative creativity which attracted the audience here in the first place. Both types of creativity have to know their place to be truly competitive for the brand.