PZU is the most recognizable brand in Poland. According to spontaneous brand recognition studies, recognition of the PZU brand reaches 88%, while prompted brand awareness is 100%.3 Even though it is associated mainly with insurance, the PZU Group umbrella contains several brands. They differ in terms of the visual systems used, target groups and business models.
The main brand used is the PZU corporate brand. This brand is used to identify the PZU Group itself, most of its companies operating on the Polish market (PZU, PZU Życie, PTE PZU, TFI PZU, PZU Pomoc, PZU Zdrowie, PZU Centrum Operacji), as well as some of the international companies – the Ukrainian companies and the branch in Estonia.
In the PZU Group’s architecture, there is also a group of so-called PZU family brands. The family consists of companies whose names do not refer to the dominant brand, such as AAS Balta i TUW PZUW. However, their logos look similar to the corporate brand. These companies also use similar visual identification systems.
The last level of brand architecture is the independent brands group. This category includes the brands within the PZU Group, the names and visualization of which differ from the corporate brand, such as Lietuvos Draudimas and Link4. Both companies are distinguished by their high prompted brand awareness on the Lithuanian and Polish markets, at 97% and 94% respectively.
The independent brands which joined the PZU Group in recent years are Alior (2015) and Pekao (2017). Both are the leading banks with regard to brand recognizability in the category of banks according to the study by Kantar Millward Brown. At the end of December 2018, the prompted recognition of the Pekao brand was 95%4.
PZU Group brand architecture (the “corporate umbrella” model)
3 Study conducted by the Gfk Polonia institute, 2018
4 Customers of Banks in Poland, Kantar Millward Brown, 2018