What do you do when you're a small and nimble organisation constantly associated with a larger brand that has nothing to do with your business? Bristol & West Investments Plc, a bridging loans provider, found themselves in this predicament.

The brief

What do you do when you're a small and nimble organisation constantly associated with a larger brand that has nothing to do with your business? Bristol & West Investments Plc, a bridging loans provider, found themselves in this predicament. They were always being associated with their much larger but completely unrelated neighbour Bristol & West Mortgages Plc.

Our approach

It was clear there was a need to reposition the business to a more service-focused organisation, away from the larger corporate in order to differentiate in their market.

Insights uncovered from a series of brand workshops suggested they were able to offer high-speed turnaround times on product applications and provide funds to customers within days rather than weeks - something their competitors continue to dream about.

For a company that wanted to project itself as fast and modern we proposed that the internet should not be just a channel of communication but a reflection of the brand ethos. Our view was that this wasn't just about finding a new name but an opportunity to develop Bristol & West Investments' online proposition as a means of defining their business.

So Bridgingloans.com was born. It's both bold and confident - what better way to create a paradigm shift for the business than to make the URL the company name.

Once the brand identity was created, the most important thing for a company called Bridgingloans.com was to have a website built on the principles of customer service and speed. Using our Traffic, Dwell and Return™ model, great care and attention was employed to ensure best in class website usability.

Financial advisers, brokers and consumers demand more from their online experience, and the new Bridgingloans.com website had to step up to the mark. With this in mind we completely streamlined the back office workflow for online applications and created a simple solution for brokers, consumers and the Bridgingloans.com team. Built with search engines in mind from the outset, we ensure the detail of information accessed throughout the website is matched by the simplicity of its usability.

To compliment the online tactics, other marketing activities also gathered momentum with the creation of literature, advertising and PR campaigns. The whole re-branding process took 6 weeks from start to finish - speed is one of our points of difference too!

The results

• 210% increase in broker applications for bridging loans within 6 months of brand launch
• Loan book increased by 55% within 6 months of brand launch
• Change in both market and broker perceptions for Bridgingloans.com
• Diminished association with Bristol & West Mortgages