When Marlborough Savings Bank and North Middlesex Savings Bank merge this spring, they’ll emerge as one entity under an entirely new name: Main Street Bank.

The two banks originally started talking because they wanted to brainstorm ways to share compliance and risk resources, said Richard K. Bennett, president and CEO of Marlborough Savings Bank. But the more they talked, the more they realized their banks had in common and they ultimately decided both institutions would be better off if they simply merged.

“As a result of all of that, we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to come up with a new name, to try to find a new name that says who we are and what we’re all about,” he told Banker & Tradesman. “Neither name was going to be appropriate for the newly merged bank, and we thought it was the perfect opportunity to go through an entire rebranding and really start from scratch.”

On top of that, both banks were a little bit limited by the geographic specificity of their names, said Walter J. Dwyer IV, president and CEO of North Middlesex Savings Bank.

North Middlesex Savings Bank, for instance, had experienced some customer confusion with both Middlesex Savings Bank and Middlesex Federal Savings. And Marlborough Savings Bank sometimes ran into trouble marketing itself in neighboring towns like Hudson. How do you promote yourself in a town when your bank bears the same name as the high school’s long-time football rivals?

Once the two banks made that decision, the next step was to enlist the help of some seasoned professionals. For that, they enlisted Small Army in Boston. Small Army works with a variety of industries, from health care to technology to financial services, but CEO Jeff Freedman said they always begin a branding campaign the same way: by finding out the moral of that particular company’s story.

That meant sitting down with employees of both banks and with customers and non-customers alike, conducting man-on-the-street interviews, and looking at the local competition to make sure Main Street Bank’s story would be all its own. That’s how they came up with the core of the bank’s story and its new slogan – “We’re richer when we support one another” – as well as the new name.

“You can’t differentiate on products and services, because guess what? Every bank has the same products and services, and if they don’t, they’re going to have it pretty soon,” Freedman said. “From a brand perspective, it’s really about trying to find what is truly unique and it’s never products and services. What it comes down to is the heart and soul of the brand.”

Legal Issues Arise

Many community banks have been rebranding, or thinking about rebranding, in an effort to broaden their appeal beyond a specific geography, said Richard Schaberg, head of the financial institutions group with the law firm Hogan Lovells. But bankers must tread carefully if they want to avoid cease-and-desist letters and other assorted legal action.

The newly minted Main Street Bank is far from the only Main Street Bank in America. According to the FDIC’s website, there are five other active institutions with that name. The closest one, however, is in West Virginia, and Dwyer and Bennett both felt that should be enough physical distance to be able to safely use that name.

With the prevalence of the Internet and the increasing reliance on digital channels to access banking, Schaberg was less confident of that question, remarking that “it’s very hard to predict that there will be a geographic distinction that is meaningful.”

Still, rebranding can be a double-edged sword. Even if there could be a little bit of risk in a name like Main Street Bank, Schaberg said it makes sense, too, because it conjures up the image of a small-town community-focused institution.

“There is kind of a finite number of names. You can get really creative, but I counsel boards is that they want to be cautious about coming up with something that is not tied to their history,” he said. “If you brand yourself in a way that is not obviously connected to your market, you could potentially alienate customers who like the local bank.”

When the merger closes in April, the resulting entity will be nearly $1 billion in assets with 14 branches. Marlborough Savings and North Middlesex Savings have said they intend to retain all their current employees. Bennett will be CEO, and Dwyer will be president of the new institution. Importantly, the new brand gives the soon-to-be-merged institution a new sense of identity and cohesion, they said.

Dwyer added that he hopes new employees who join Main Street Bank three years from now won’t be able to tell which bank their colleagues originally came from.

“In terms of really bringing together the internal culture, we felt it was important to have a new name and a new identity we could all embrace, and feel like we were part of something together,” he said.