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 paradigmchiefly 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.
Feedback systems in the Loughborough University Business School operate in the context of a centralised university framework which provides guidelines, codes of practice, questionnaire templates and OMR equipment to read large quantities of forms. Informal feedback is encouraged and a system of course representatives and liaison committees is supported with help and training from the Students' Union. These are supplemented by questionnaires at module, year and programme level, containing both central and departmental questions. The systems culminate in annual Programme Review Boards whose actions are reported back to students. With suitable safeguards, efforts at closing the loop encourage sufficient student confidence in the system for the results to be reliable and useful. Staff confidence is increased by involvement in the process although this can conflict with central requirements. However central support is crucial for success and Business Schools can resolve this dilemma by taking the lead in university developments.
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