My Home Move Conveyancing: Psychology-driven brand refresh

The challenge

Moving home is an exciting process – albeit a very long one! Just when you think you’re ready to go – you’ve found the property of your dreams, spoken to your mortgage adviser, sorted through your finances – you remember you need to do the thing you’ve been trying to avoid all along: find a conveyancer. Hence, some call conveyancing the ‘necessary evil’ of the moving journey.

But, it shouldn’t feel this way, right? We didn’t think so either! Enter My Home Move Conveyancing (MHMC), the leading UK online conveyancer that combines great service with technology to help give clients greater control over the final stages of their home move. Our challenge was to develop a new brand strategy and identity that helped them move from a market leader to a market dominator.

The approach

To achieve this goal, we knew we needed to make an emotional connection with homebuyers. It was essential that we deeply understood the market landscape, the brand’s strengths and weaknesses and the customer journey and mindset. People won’t always tell you what they really feel – but our unique approach meant we could tackle this obstacle.

So, we kicked off the discovery process with 12 one-on-one interviews with key stakeholders and an all-employee survey – delivering lots of valuable insight and making the whole MHMC team feel passionate about the brand we were shaping together.

To understand the decision-making process through a psychological lens, we collaborated with leading behavioural science research experts IB in conducting 15 in-depth psychological interviews with a range of customers and prospects at different stages in the buying journey. This helped reveal the emotional drivers, nonconscious needs and cognitive demands that influence the customer experiences with their conveyancing provider of choice.

These were some of the key themes that became the cornerstone of the brand development process:

1. A deep psychological tension and vulnerability around choosing the right conveyancer – caused by the importance of the home move vs. a low-level understanding of what conveyancing involves.
2. This ‘high stakes’ vs. ‘low understanding’ decision means the brain desperately looks for cues of trust and transparency to moderate their anxiety and make their decision easier.
3. The brand look and TOV becomes a key differentiator in making them feel like they are choosing a reliable provider – looking for a balance of warmth and professionalism.
4. Local vs. online: people know ‘local knowledge is not a thing’, but the main reason why people will choose a local solicitor is that – if something goes wrong – they know where they are! They want to work with real people that feel psychologically close.
5. Their choice is driven by companies who give them a sense of reassurance and control – with trust trumping price.

After this thorough understanding of the psyche of homebuyers, we could crack on with the full brand development with complete confidence, and the new customer proposition and tagline became:

A new brand arrow device became an obvious and simple manifestation of the proposition and was supported by five proposition pillars:

And this was all supported by a refreshed brand strategy:

• Brand Purpose: To transform people’s home-move dreams into a reality
• Brand Vision: Be the most trusted brand in the home move market synonymous with customer care and exceptional service
• Brand Personality: Caregiver

The new brand identity combines warmth with expertise. The use of colour was carefully considered, with the blues being reassuring and calming and the orange providing a sense of action and a contemporary feel.

Getting the imagery right was also one of the most important differentiators in making brand communications deliver a more emotional connection. All imagery feels candid, real and unposed – not looking at the camera but capturing a real moment in time – in a way that the audience can see themselves or their family being in once they are in their new home. The nice, modern properties, and the people in them, are designed to make the brand feel premium and aspirational.

The resulting brand look and tone of voice are completely different to any other in the market – and neatly positions MHMC as the trusted ‘John Lewis’ of the conveyancing market.

The results

The new brand and website launched in July 2023. Results are confidential, however the client saw a substantial increase in sales volume off the back of this work.

Here is what Alistair Singer, E-commerce Director at My Home Move Conveyancing, had to say about working with us:

“I met Simon from Moreish at a chance encounter at the FS Forum and I’m so glad I did. Through our collaboration with Moreish and IB, we have delivered behavioural science-based research that has influenced all areas of the business and informed a brand strategy and identity, which Moreish have crafted in collaboration with us to perfection.

“With psychologically based evidence to support the approach, we’re feeling super confident the new brand strategy will be a game changer in our market. Moreish has managed to capture our customer-centric way of doing business that we had never found a way to articulate and bring to life previously.

“I’d recommend Moreish to any FS firm needing to refine their brand strategy and bring to life their communications in a way that emotionally connects with their audience.”