A Bold Financial Services Brand Comes to America

Following a shift in focus from its legacy Venezuelan market to the United States, longtime client Mercantil Bank needed to create a new compelling and engaging consumer brand for its retail banking business. Leveraging the bank’s close ties to community organizations and its pride in offering products that meet the needs of the local market, we crafted a value proposition that focused on the Brand Intimacy archetype of identity (reflecting an aspirational image or admired values and beliefs that resonate deeply). It centered on the idea of “Meant for You.”

A new name, Amerant, was formed from the Mercantil name and “Amer,” for America. This name further established the brand’s commitment to its new communities. Complementing this, the brand identity and design system extensively use warm colors, friendly modern typography, rounded shapes, and photography of people living vibrant lives.

MBLM also relaunched the brand’s web presence, combining four separate legacy websites for personal banking, international banking, trust, and investment audiences. We recognized the importance of layouts for all devices, given that mobile traffic makes up 54% of the site traffic. The MBLM team designed and developed the public website and also designed a full suite of user interface elements and a pattern library that were implemented by product teams responsible for online banking and mobile banking. We also created product comparison templates that follow best practices typically only used by the “big banks” to easily compare accounts or get details about individual products. The design templates are sophisticated and enable clients to manage all web content using WordPress. MBLM provides ongoing support and maintenance to the Amerant team as it continues to expand and advance its business.