Union Bank - Standing out among the forest

Apo, Olia, Noah, and Paris looking for insights.

For Creative Planning, my group had been assigned Union Bank, former Union Bank of California.
The first task was to reframe the problem, and here is the final process we went through to obtain a clear, real, and solid statement:


- How can Union Bank expand its share of the market and grow in popularity without sacrificing its key strengths that other larger banks lacked to maintain?
- How can Union Bank gain market and mind share over larger bank chains while building upon their strengths over the rest of the industry, and establish healthy relationships with current and potential customers.
- How can Union Bank strengthen and build upon their customer base, without sacrificing who they are?
- Union Bank needs to grow, without the pains.

Once the problem was defined, we picked the metaphor of a tree in a forest, in order to make the story more compelling and easier to grasp. We saw Union Bank as a shorter, yet stronger tree, with a solid trunk [= foundations].
We realized that the UB tree did not have many branches [= presence], it didn't spread out the forest, but we also noticed that in case of storms [= economic crisis] the habitants of the forest would most likely look for shelter there and not under the tall, skinny trees that might fall, or already have. Therefore, being in a storm right now [2008-2010] we believe it is important to build strong roots and trunks in order to grow properly, and stand out without losing integrity.

Ub

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