Egg Shown as Leading Online Financial Services Brand 28/06/00 Egg is clearly the most visible online financial services brand, according to a recent survey by BMRB International. The research revealed that awareness of Egg's advertising is greater than any other brand in the online financial market place. Egg scored the highest rate of top of mind advertising awareness with 9% of all adults recalling it. This equates to 18% of Internet users. Firstdirect.com, with 7% of Web users aware of its advertising and 4% of the adult population as a whole, followed Egg at some distance. Smile and Barclays occupied third and fourth places. 6% of Net users and 3% of all adults had seen or heard advertising for the former whilst 5% of Net users and 3% of adults recalled advertising for Barclays. Nat West, first-e and ft.com shared the final place in the top five. 4% of Web users and 2% of adults remembered advertising for each of these companies. According to Katharine Phillips, senior associate director of BMRB Financial, "It has become very difficult for financial services companies to stand out in an increasingly cluttered marketplace. Traditional financial services like Barclays and NatWest are benefiting from long histories of brand building in their awareness as online brands. There is a real opportunity for the traditional high street banks to promote their Internet services still further". Egg and Firstdirect.com maintain their positions at the top of the league table when adults are prompted with company names, scoring recall levels of 76% and 70% among Web users and 60% and 57% among all adults. Those most likely to recall advertising (with or without prompting) by online financial services companies are the young (89% of all under 45 years old), affluent (89% of all AB's), men (83%), and Internet users (94%). The survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample size of 1,000 adults (aged 15 years and over). Interviews were conducted by telephone between 31 March and 2nd April 2000. Key questions were: Which Internet companies that offer financial products and services have you seen or heard any advertising for recently? Which of the following Internet companies offering financial products or services have you seen or heard any advertising for recently?