BrandMatters

Antares

Antares is the boutique fund manager wholly owned by nabInvest, the market leading direct investment arm of NAB Wealth Management. Antares Fixed Income has managed fixed interest securities for clients since 1990 and currently has over AU$12billion under management. The team comprises 7 investment professionals with an average experience of over 16 years in the industry.

Task

National Australia Bank’s (NAB) wholesale and institutional banking business was about to create a new alternative investments, asset management business. They were unsure as to whether the new business should be developed as a standalone brand, to use their own divisional brand nabCapital, or in fact leverage the NAB parent brand in some way. Given the nature of investments the regulator required some degree of separation from the NAB retail bank brand, but what was that degree of separation? Essentially this was a brand architecture, positioning and naming task all rolled into one. Should we seek the reassurance of the NAB brand or would its banking origins be seen as less attractive to financial planners and sophisticated investors? Alternatively, would a completely stand alone unproven, unknown brand name be seen as too risky and therefore resisted? BrandMatters was engaged to investigate the various brand architecture, positioning and naming options and make a subsequent recommendation

Approach

Desk research was conducted to understand the business strategy, objectives, challenges and competitive environment. Depth interviews were conducted internally to determine senior executive views as to what was the appropriate architecture, as internal engagement around our decision was critical to ensure subsequent support. External interviews were also conducted to determine perceptions and likely take up rates when the various options were presented. Part of the research process also tested the suitability of a name that had previously been suggested, Antares, which was the brightest red star in the night time sky. This name was seen to create a subtle link to the NAB corporate brand typically presented as a red star on a black background.

Results

The brand name Antares, together with the logo development, use of the NAB corporate colours and associated endorsement, ‘a nabCapital Company’, provided a subtle association with the parent company, NAB. A brand architecture was developed to show how ‘Antares’ was positioned within the NAB portfolio, together with a brand positioning of ‘Smart’ which became the brand essence, or single organising thought, for the company. The fund has had significant inflows and continues to be well received in the external market place. Given our success with this project, subsequent appointments to consider nabCapital’s and nabInvest’s positioning and architecture followed soon after.