The new reputation marketing: Where purpose meets profit in financial services

Have you ever seen a brand’s logo on the court of an NBA game, or perhaps embroidered on the cap of your favorite golfer, or really anywhere else it just doesn’t seem to belong?

In this moment, you probably did one of two things. Most people do the first – ignore it. But a savvy few may ask, “how could the juice possibly be worth the squeeze for this brand investment?”

If you’ve ever wondered if brands are seeing returns on these types of sponsorships and advertising campaigns, it has not been in vain.

Our latest Humanizing Brand Experience: Financial Services Vol 4 report, in partnership with American Banker, makes clear: the foundation of successful reputation marketing isn’t the what—it’s the why.  A well-crafted reputation strategy achieves what product-focused marketing alone cannot: it builds authentic connections between a brand’s purpose and its presence in people’s lives through experiences, programs, and community initiatives.

The current state of brand investment

Most brands invest heavily in driving awareness, customer acquisition, and brand experience, using sophisticated consumer insights, targeting, and ad spend. Yet when it comes to other dimensions of experience like community investment, sponsorship, thought leadership, and engagement, many rely on ad-hoc or opportunistic methods that fail to deliver meaningful results.

Consider a typical golf tournament sponsorship. The bank’s logo appears on hats, shirts, and signage. Executives fill hospitality tents. The marketing team tracks impressions and media mentions and hopefully sales activity. Yet without connecting these investments to the brand’s larger purpose in the community, the impact remains short-term at best – and the returns are lackluster.

True reputation marketing requires aligning every hallmark moment with your brand’s core purpose and the positive change you aim to create in society.

The missing link: Strategic purpose

When sponsorships and community investments operate in isolation from brand strategy, organizations miss opportunities for deeper resonance. Our Humanizing Brand Experience report shows that trust ranks as the third most important intellectual driver for financial brands, while corporate responsibility comes in ninth. Yet social responsibility ranks 17th, indicating a clear gap between intention and execution.

Effective reputation marketing begins with a fundamental question: who are the stakeholders that will benefit if we achieve our purpose, and what activities will create the most positive outcomes that we’re uniquely positioned to deliver?

This means looking beyond potential customers to consider who could benefit from your work, even if they never use your products. For financial institutions, this might mean investing in financial literacy programs in underserved communities or supporting small business development in emerging neighborhoods. When you create a positive impact for these broader stakeholder groups, you build goodwill that ultimately strengthens your brand and attracts customers who share your values.

Building a strategic reputation framework

The financial services sector stands at a critical inflection point. As our research increasingly demonstrates the profound connection between financial stability and overall well-being, with 51% of respondents claiming that an improvement in financial health would result in significant or life-altering improvement, financial institutions have both an opportunity and responsibility to evolve their reputation marketing beyond mere visibility. Those who recognize this moment can transform fragmented promotional efforts into strategic community investments that address real human needs while building deeper brand connections

Effective reputation marketing requires a clear framework that connects purpose to results. Here’s how to build one:

1. Define your purpose-driven value proposition: Identify focus areas that align with your brand purpose and where you can uniquely make a difference.
2. Map your stakeholders: Look beyond direct customers to understand who could benefit from your work and how, from an individual to society at large.
3. Identify strategic partners: Find organizations already working in your focus areas who can help amplify your influence-even if the partnership is not obvious.
4. Plan your investment: Determine resource allocation across initiatives and how to measure returns. This might look like tracking sales enablement from sponsored events, measuring employee engagement with community initiatives, analyzing earned media, or assessing recruitment success rates tied to reputation activities.
5. Create activation plans: Develop comprehensive plans that cascade from the boardroom to the front line.

Returning to our golf sponsorship example: a strategic reputation marketing approach would transform these investments from mere logo placement to meaningful engagement. Forward-thinking brands would select players whose values and story align with their brand purpose. Then, when these athletes speak about their partnership, they can naturally connect it to the brand’s greater mission—perhaps relating their own journey to the brand’s commitment to financial empowerment.

The power of physical presence

Financial institutions have a distinct advantage in building community connections: physical presence. While many modern brands struggle to create tangible community ties, banks and credit unions start with built-in brand awareness through their branch networks.

According to the Humanizing Brand Experience report, physical spaces and environments continue to rank in the top Sensorial drivers for retail banks, creating a foundational level of community awareness that digital-only brands can’t match.

Smart institutions are reimagining these spaces as community business centers and local partnership hubs. Their branches can become educational spaces and gathering places for non-profits and community groups. This physical presence creates permission for deeper community engagement and provides a platform for activating sponsorships and programs in meaningful ways.

Moving forward with purpose

The evolution from ad-hoc community investment to strategic reputation marketing demands a comprehensive transformation in how organizations approach community engagement. Success requires ensuring executives are trained on key messages and consistently communicate purpose-driven initiatives. It means connecting reputation activities across all touchpoints, from sponsorships to community programs, while maintaining robust measurement of both traditional metrics and broader performance indicators. Internal engagement proves equally crucial, with organizations needing clear processes and roles that build employee enthusiasm and participation.

Throughout all these efforts, maintaining a consistent thread between reputation marketing initiatives and brand purpose remains paramount. This alignment must extend from the boardroom to front-line employees, ensuring every interaction reinforces the brand’s larger promise and impact.

Want to learn more about building meaningful community connections and driving brand reputation? Download the full Humanizing Brand Experience report and unlock strategies that drive deeper customer connections across every dimension of experience.