RBS
A rebrand strategy document produced in 2020, the year RBS Group became NatWest Group. Benchmarked against purpose-led marks including Mastercard, the NHS and the UN.
Objective
In 2020 RBS Group renamed itself NatWest Group, retiring a masthead that had become inseparable from the 2008 financial crisis. Rebrands at that scale are not design exercises; they are attempts to change what a name means.
The strategic question is what the new brand stands for, which is why the reference material assembled here is not other banks.
Creative response
Design and production of a rebrand strategy document.
- Initial strategic thinking. Captured separately as a working document
- A purpose-led benchmark set. Reference marks assembled from Mastercard, the NHS, the United Nations, LinkedIn, Hootsuite and Cerebral Palsy Cymru, organisations chosen for what they stand for rather than what they sell
- RBS Rainbow. The bank's own diversity mark included in the reference set
- Initial strategic thinking. Captured separately as a working document
- A purpose-led benchmark set. Reference marks assembled from Mastercard, the NHS, the United Nations, LinkedIn, Hootsuite and Cerebral Palsy Cymru, organisations chosen for what they stand for rather than what they sell
- RBS Rainbow. The bank's own diversity mark included in the reference set
Results
The benchmark set is the tell. Choosing the NHS and the UN as comparators for a retail bank frames the exercise as a question of public legitimacy rather than market positioning, which is the correct read of what RBS faced in 2020.
RBS