Breaking the monolithic mould

Explores the implications of Midland Bank’s attempts in the mid‐1980s to adopt an endorsed corporate identity strategy and to brand its personal financial services. Sets out the reasons why banks have traditionally applied monolithic identity systems and eschewed explicit branding, and presents Midland’s reasons for challenging that paradigm ‐ chiefly the nature of its group structure and its desire to segment its personal market more effectively. While the Midland approach was not a commercial success, it provides some general lessons which help to inform corporate identity theory in general and financial sector identity and branding theory in particular. These include the need for identity to be contingent on strategy, the importance of “soft” as well as “hard” identity features, the conflicts between different identity systems (e.g. firm‐specific versus industry‐generic) and the problems of applying branding theory to products which are in essence no more than contracts.