The bank, formed from the merger of Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, previously used the tagline ‘Together. We are Santander’ to highlight the benefits of banking with a big organisation.
It is switching to the strapline ‘Driven to do better’. The bank will retain its ‘red bricks’ visual theme, but ads by its agency Engine will feature its brand ambassadors, British Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, more prominently. The positioning will be launched with a major campaign later this summer.
‘We recognise that people have a lot of trust issues with banking, and that they need to see banks being a bit more humble,’ said Keith Moor, UK brand and communications director at Santander.
‘It is also about our striving to be a serious competitor on the UK high street,’ he added.
Santander has fared quite poorly in customer satisfaction surveys in the past 18 months, which led UK chief executive Ana Patricia Botin to tell a parliamentary Select Committee in January that the brand has ‘a lot of work to do’ to improve its performance.
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