The second BSA Marketing Symposium took place in early July. Alistair Welham, non-executive director of Newbury Building Society and co-founder of the Marketing Symposium, reflects on the key highlights from the event.

Wednesday 2 July brought warm weather to London—slightly cooler than earlier in the week—but that didn’t stop a dedicated group of brand ambassadors from gathering at BSA headquarters on Kingsway for an energising discussion on all things Building Society brand. 

This was the second in our BSA Marketing Symposium series, and we were fortunate to welcome two brilliant brand minds: Mary Say from Venture Brand and Duncan Walters of Pentire Communications. Both bring rich experience in brand management and development, now starting exciting new business ventures. 

 Mary opened the session with a sharp, digestible refresher on the fundamentals: “What is brand—and why does it matter?” It’s no small task to simplify such a complex topic, but Mary’s brand framework landed beautifully with the group. A standout moment? Mary’s children claim her greatest achievement is creating the “Celebrations” chocolates brand, a reminder that legacy takes many shapes! 

We then broke into small groups to explore what makes each of our brands truly distinctive. A real challenge for Building Societies, where shared values like mutuality, heritage, community presence and branch networks create more overlap than differentiation. While product offerings vary, they rarely help carve out a unique brand space.   

Interested in trying this exercise yourself?  We've included a five-question brand assessment form here

Next, Duncan whisked us through the digital landscape with a toolkit of online resources for assessing brand health and tracking competitor performance. Especially useful for those with limited budgets but time to invest, his real-world examples showed just how much insight can be gained into how our brands are perceived, discussed, and searched across markets.   



A list of the tools Duncan shared can be found here  

Search data and competitor insights: 

https://trends.google.com/trends/ 

https://business.google.com/uk/ad-tools/keyword-planner/ 

https://www.semrush.com/projects/ 

Similarweb.com 

AI chatbot research tools: 

https://chatgpt.com 

https://gemini.google.com 

https://www.perplexity.ai 

We closed with an open discussion around the state of Building Society brands today. A common theme emerged: the temptation to change the brand or logos without fully understanding current performance or the real value such changes might bring. As ever, insight must lead action. 

Here are a few comments from those that attended: 

Jo Gillow (Bath BS) 

Thanks to the BSA team for organising such an insightful session. These opportunities are so valuable and I’m so glad I made time to attend. I’ve picked up lots of new tools and ideas to try.

Emma Gentry (Newbury BS) 

The brand session was incredibly informative and genuinely helpful. The speakers clearly took the time to tailor the content to our sector and its unique challenges, which was greatly appreciated. I came away with fresh ideas and a renewed perspective. I'd love to see future sessions explore some of these areas in more depth.

Richard Steed (Harpenden BS) 

It’s always so valuable and insightful to have these opportunities to share thoughts and ideas with others and gain insights from such respected speakers.  The theme and content were so relevant and understanding of the challenges we all face – I found the day really beneficial and provided me with some new ideas and perceptions.  Thanks to everyone involved at the BSA for organising and I hope to see future events like this to delve into branding even further

As many people were unable to join us in person, we're exploring the option of running an online version of the session later in the year. If that’s something you'd be interested in, just drop a note to Debbie Enever. 

That’s it for now. After summer, we’ll turn our attention to the third symposium. If there’s a topic, you’d love us to explore, please let Debbie know—we’d be delighted to hear your thoughts.