Audacious merger propels King & Wood Mallesons into top 20 legal brands globally.

The newly merged King & Wood Mallesons brand now ranks No. 16 in the Acritas Sharplegal Global Legal Brand rankings.

To offer their clients the best possible service, King & Wood Mallesons put a strong focus on their client’s needs. This seems to pay off through the only sino-western merger and a strong brand focus.

mext supported King & Wood Mallesons in developing the new brand and communications and worked with mr mumbles as the creative agency. The brand was developed with the help of mext’s cutting edge brand development tools based on the most modern psychology.

One of the tools, HuNeeds®, is able to map client & employee needs and help position the brand, its practices, people and offers. HuTrust® is globally the only robust approach to analysing, building and managing trust.

The initial launch of the merged brand led to accolades in the legal and marketing industry, with Wall Street Journal exclaiming: ‘London and New York beware. Here comes King & Wood Mallesons.’

King & Wood Mallesons was also the only professional services entry nominated finalist in the prestigious AMA New Brand Launch awards against the likes of BUPA. Apart from brand and marketing success, the launch led immediately to new business leads. Two weeks after launch of the merged brand the Asia Wall Street Paper reported that King & Wood Mallesons was already working on 40 new business cases and matters.

New study out now. Banks just make trust threshold, almost half don't trust their banks for Competence, over half don't trust the banks for their vision

New study shows Australian banks are barely trusted because of lack of trust in their vision and competence.

Banks globally are struggling with low customer trust. Now a new study, using a methodology to dimensionalise trust, uncovers what the bank’s trust is (not) made of. The methodology, HuTrust®, is globally the only psychologically sound, statistically robust and practically proven understanding of trust. HuTrust® analyses what the Big 4 banks in Australian are trusted for – and not. Developed by mext Managing Director Stefan Grafe with a German psychologist and psychology professor W. Salber, HuTrust® has successfully been applied with organisations like Qatar Airways, KPN Europe, Origin, Telstra and the Singaporean Government. HuTrust® examines the six drivers of trust – trust in stability, trust in future development, trust in an appealing relationship, trust in benefit, trust in the vision and trust in the competence. These six drivers of trust are statistically proven and also proven to determine the bank’s own performance indicators, satisfaction and the Net Promoter Score (NPS®).

The HuTrust® components are measured on a 0-10 scale, from ‘don’t trust at all’ to ‘trust very much’. In the trust scale scores from 0-4 mean to customers that they distrust. The 5 and 6 scores mean lack of trust and only as of 7 customers mean increasing levels of trust. The average of the 6 HuTrust® components has shown to be equal to the customers overall trust score.

The Big 4 Australian Banks score almost equal on all 6 trust components, a sign that they continue to be  inadequately differentiated. The study with 657 customers shows that over half of customers do not trust their bank’s vision and almost half of their customers do not trust the big 4 for their competence. ‘Between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 customers actively distrust their bank for its vision’, says mext Managing Director, Stefan Grafe, ‘this inhibits the banks ability to build more trust with their customers. Banks have to understand much better what their vision should be and communicate it.’

Overall brand trust in the big 4 just goes beyond the trust threshold of 7. But they surpass the trust threshold only on stability, development and benefit trust. Despite huge spending on ‘relationship building’, relationship trust for all 4 stays below the trust threshold – they are not trusted for offering an appealing relationship.

The findings of the second Bank HuTrust® Profile helps financial service organisations analyse and better build trust with their customers. Grafe says: ‘Trust is the key to the banks’ success. Trust drives their Net promoter score, satisfaction and their reputation. With the HuTrust® results they can understand where the trust deficits are and therefore do something about it. Trust is the most powerful driver of customer engagement. Trust is very valuable to customers – that’s why it is so valuable to organisations and their performance.

Using the most modern psychology we can help you better understand your consumer’s and customer’s needs and motivations and build trust with them. mext