TV ads for banks generally suck, but I saw one last night that might be the worst yet. It’s part of the Harris Bank “We’re Here to Help” campaign. Going from memory … A couple is in a car dealership talking to a car salesman, and the couple spots a Harris truck rolling by with a message on the side that says, “The dealer paid $21,000.” Knowing smile from the couple. Then, an attractive young woman is waiting for a commuter train and she sees a Harris billboard that says, “The man of your dreams is in the next car.” Glowing smile from the woman. “Harris Bank – you’d be surprised to see all the ways we can help you.”
Give me a break. This messaging is so bad on so many levels I don’t know where to start.
First, there’s no logical connection between the benefits in the commercial (finding a husband) and the benefits any normal person would expect from a bank.
Second, because there is no logical connection, the viewer can only assume that Harris has no actual benefits to tell us about.
Third, Harris insults our intelligence by assuming we won’t notice the smoke and mirrors act.
Fourth (and somewhat parenthetically), talk about hitting a man when he’s down! Why do they go after the auto industry, appealing to the worst kind of “used car salesman” stereotype? If any company should be sensitive to the woes of a troubled sector, you’d think it would be a financial institution!
How can a large and sophisticated bank make so many creative blunders in a 30-second TV spot? Why do banks continue to believe they can charm us into doing business with them? I don’t know about you, but I don’t choose a bank based on their ability to entertain me. I might select a beer for that reason, but not a bank. Here are things I’m looking for from a bank. Your list may be different, but I’ll bet not that different.
- I want to be educated, not entertained
- I want a better understanding of personal finance
- I want a better understanding of MY personal financial needs
- I want honesty
- I want competence on the big stuff and the little stuff
- I want a close relationship
- I want a genuine relationship
- I want the bank to save me and make me more money than the other bank did
The Harris ad – and most bank commercials – manage to miss every one of these needs. Instead, we get glib, slick, packaged pablum, which is the exact opposite of what we need and want. Have the banks noticed … we’ve gotten into a horrible financial mess because finance grew incredibly complex and people inside and outside the banks were asleep at the wheel. I think (God, I hope) people have finally figured out it takes more than a slogan or a free toaster to make a sound financial decision.
Save Money and Boost Business with Social Media
I’m taking the long way around the barn today, but here’s the point. Banks should stop advertising on TV and use the money to invest in a serious social media program. Social media is the platform to educate, to establish genuine relationships, to convey honesty and openness and competence, to inform consumers about their product and service advantages.
Once I’ve established that a bank is genuine, honest, open, competent, and helpful, then I might care to watch their flights of creative advertising fancy. But I probably won’t need to, because I’ll already be a customer.
Bank TV Ads Are Worse than Useless. They Are Counterproductive.
Just when I was getting really steamed at Harris, I went to the Harris Bank website and got quite a surprise. What do you think? To me, the site addresses many of my needs. Harris conveys a willingness to educate and presents its credentials in a businesslike yet persuasive manner. The tone of the site is nothing like the tone of the ad. So why have the ad?
Instead, how about a blog that talks about important personal finance issues, reports news, and profiles employees?
Why not get into niches? Go to Eons to answer questions for Boomers. Facebook or MySpace to help college students set up smart checking and savings accounts. (BTW, they might really want to take a look at Facebook. There’s a group with 63 members called I got f***ked by Harris Bank. It ain’t pretty, but it’s real.)
And what about Twitter? If a bank wants people to know what’s going on at their institution, they’ll reach scads more folks on Twitter than by waiting for folks to go to the corporate website and poke around.
Banks that capitalize (no pun intended) on social media will win in the long run. Ads that offer no substantive benefits invite commoditization of a firm’s products and services. Firms that establish real relationships, because they view customers as real people, differentiate themselves on the deepest levels and secure loyalty for the long term.
Over to You!
What kind of marketing would you do if you owned a bank? Are you giving customers what they need, what you think they need, or what you want them to need?
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Brad, I am with you on bank advertising. My own bank did a horrifying commercial last year that inspired a blog post. There are many financial blogs out there but none by banks. Hmmm, something seems very wrong with that picture. I visited my bank’s website recently and instead of just logging in, I looked around and discovered a service that would be very helpful to me, one that I would have loved to hear about in a commercial or some form of communication. Banks are doing a horrible job of communicating with their audience and that really should change.
Karen Swims last blog post..Eyes Half Mast, Mug Half Full – I am There
Hi Karen, As usual, we are of like minds. Maybe banks are reluctant to engage in social media because their cultures tend to be extremely conservative and confidentiality is supremely important. Those are legitimate issues, but ones that can be easily overcome, don’t you think?
Brad Shorrs last blog post..Banks Should Stop TV Advertising and Use Social Media
Unfortunately the bankers may be the last to pick up the social media banner. Maybe their replacements will get it, but I don’t think financial organizations like openness all that much. It appears that wide open discussion of products, rates and service puts pressure on profits in the financial sector even more so than other markets (money is the epitome of a commodity product). Some of the discussion going on around AIG and Credit Default Swaps indicates that an open environment would have killed the game pretty rapidly because the products would have been either copied or exposed for what they were. (This being a good thing for us, not the bankers)
Which bring us to your analysis of the ad. I tend to agree with you. I’ve not heard whether this is a successful campaign via traditional measures, but it follows a kind of strange logic that a bank can fix all areas of your life rather than just protect your money. I would hope most folks have figured out this isn’t the case, but who knows. I have similar problems with the Mastercard commercials that seem to offer happiness through plastic.
A wise bank may find that social media allows it to excel in the areas that banking should excel – protect liquid assets, provide meaningful loans, and minimize snake like lines for a teller.
Fred H Schlegels last blog post..Physics and Ideation: Ways To Unleash Creativity
Hi Fred, Sounds like you understand the industry rather well. Everything you say screams opportunity to me. The first bank that figures out the public wants everything that banks aren’t giving them stands to win big. “Happiness through Plastic”. Now there’s a tagline!
Brad Shorrs last blog post..Banks Should Stop TV Advertising and Use Social Media
Fred, great article and perspective. Have you seen what Bank of America has done to engage their small business customers using the Jive SBS platform: http://smallbusinessonlinecommunity.bankofamerica.com/index.jspa. You are exactly right that when it comes to banking everyone needs to get back to the where the industry started, which is relationships. Banks that actually connect and build strong relationships with their customers can expect to benefit in a space that is currently becoming abstracted and commoditized–and their customers will, too!
Christopher Moraces last blog post..Can single-tenant work for enterprise SaaS?
Brad,
Based on your description of the advertisement, it seems to me that all that they could hope to achieve by this is to offend those who are associated with the automobile industry.
True, used car dealers are commonly viewed as the scum of the earth, but as you say, bankers themselves do not enjoy an overly positive reputation at the moment, and taking cheap shots at the automobile industry makes little sense in the context of a nation which is rallying behind an industry which is battling for its survival.
Whatever their medium, they should stick to their core message of how they can serve the needs of their target audience.
I agree that banks should place more emphasis on trying to harness the power of social media as a tool of communicating with their target audience. However, I would caution that before banks (or any organization) tries to take advantage of the opportunities offered by various social media platforms, they need to first take time to understand the dynamics of the social media environment and how to interact in a manner which resonates with those who they are attempting to reach.
I highly doubt, for example, that the type of one way communication which financial institutions are used to in traditional advertising environments would be an effective model in a social media environment in which interactivity and approachability is seen as a virtue.
Andrews last blog post..How 35 workplace deaths were exposed in an internet chat room
Hi Andrew, Banks certainly would need a great deal of preparation before diving into social media – all the more reason they should start now.
Brad Shorrs last blog post..Banks Should Stop TV Advertising and Use Social Media
While I don’t get as cranked as you over bank ads, do agree that some connection between services offered and the customer would be refreshing. As others have commented, the commodity nature of the product – money and the servicing thereof – makes it a close contender for being the “oldest profession”. And we all know the other service normally awarded that title!
There has been a trend over the past 10-15 years to avoid anything resembling a direct approach in media advertising; as a read it, has a good deal to do with the increasingly young average age of the consumer marketplace and how it is perceived. Gee, I can remember the good old days when an advertiser might just tell you in an interesting and informative way why you should buy its product. Attempting to cleverly entertain so that the audience talks about the ad seen the previous day while forgetting the company/product involved is getting a bit tiresome. Perhaps the current messy economic situation will influence some to spend their ad dollars in a wiser and more effective manner. We can only hope…
Check out usaa.com and tell me/us what you think of their site and the way they come across. A very successful firm over the years in the banking and insurance business with few offices outside of San Antonio and little or no traditional advertising.
Hi Bill, Telling stories, being indirect, etc., is fine, but there has to be some connection between the story and the actual benefits offered by the advertiser. Otherwise, it’s ineffective. As David Ogilvy said, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” The USAA bank site has a nice clean design and is very straightforward – no hype here. They have to do something about their URLs, tho -
https://www.usaa.com/inet/ent_utils/McStaticPages?key=become_member_benefits
Brad Shorrs last blog post..Banks Should Stop TV Advertising and Use Social Media
First off, thanks for the link. Second, lets slow down. Even though the ad you describe is awful for many reasons, an awful ad doesn’t mean the medium is awful. Social media still needs something to tell people about it. IE, a blog can’t get people to it, it can only get people back. TV could be used to tell a bigger story about how the bank wants to educate people through social media. Thus, the TV isn’t about silly things like getting husbands, it’s about informing people about how this bank, with a blog, Twitter feed, etc, is different. The TV then drives someone to social media, the social media drives them back and down the road to purchase decision.
People don’t think it’s easy to flip banks. Social media can explain the benefits and ease.
So, while i like the tone of your post, and your ideas, i don’t like the wholesale dismissal of a medium. It can be used better, and the bank can use social media better to change behavior.
Matts last blog post..Internet Mass Media Bubble?
Hi Matt, You make a fair point, and thank you for jumping into the conversation. The idea of interweaving media – driving people to blogs from TV spots and vice versa, is a very cool concept, and much better than dropping TV from the marketing mix. In any event, it wasn’t really my intent to trash TV advertising in general, although I can see now it definitely comes across that way. But it seems to me that banks, as a group, consistently put out TV ads that are worse than having no ads at all. But now that you mention it, financial institutions have used TV quite effectively in years gone by. E.F. Hutton’s “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen” campaign and Smith Barney, “We make money the old fashioned way, we earn it,” resonated, in my opinion, in a very positive way. The theme of Smith Barney’s campaign is quite appropriate these days.
Brad Shorrs last blog post..Book Review – World Wide Rave, by David Meerman Scott
social media is a wing of marketing, not it’s own building. When they work together, it gets better.
Matts last blog post..Internet Mass Media Bubble?
Figuring out the right balance to strike between all the tools available to create relationships between prospect, customer, employee, and company is the critical marketing challenge. It is easy to allow the momentum of established tools prevent the adoption of new tools. Add the challenges of familiarity (“I like postcards because I understand postcards”), measurement difficulties (Nielson vs Clicks), popularity contests, messaging fear, and simple technological concerns, and it’s easy to see why early adoption is the realm of the few.
Fred H Schlegels last blog post..Physics and Ideation: When Does A Breakthrough Idea Become An Acceptable Idea?