The Story

I recently conducted some research on one of the larger community banks here in Portland, Oregon, West Coast Bank (www.wcb.com). My intention was to dig in, check them out, and see how well their bank marketing strategies, branches and overall experience tells and proves their story. I began digging around and checking them out, and encountered one small problem . . .

I have no idea what their story is.

So it’s kinda hard for me to determine whether their materials are telling and proving their story…since I don’t know what story to compare to. Big problem.

There is a fair amount of name recognition (not brand recognition) for West Coast Bank within the Pacific Northwest. That’s good. So I decided to take an informal poll. When I randomly asked people what they thought about West Coast Bank, the feedback was neither good, nor bad. What’s more, when asked about how well West Coast Bank brands itself, the majority of folks didn’t have an opinion.

We believe indifference is what kills brands. Still, too many companies—apparently West Coast Bank included—are too afraid to take a stance and tell the world what they stand for. The result? Not much story telling—let alone proving—going on in the world of bank marketing.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Bank Branding, Rants, Bank Marketing, Branding, Corporate branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.