The Story

I was recently on a CBC business trip with a colleague to meet a client to discuss, what else, but their branch environment. So not surprising that on the way, we noticed another bank whose construction of a new branch was about 80% complete. Furniture seemed to be the final item on the to-do list.

Even whizzing past at a modest 55 miles an hour, I saw all that I needed to see in those 3 seconds (an eternity when you’re bored). Between the beige exterior paint that politely says “Don’t mind me, I’m just the paint”; the oversized parking lot (clearly for the employees); and a trench line of teller row windows Navy SEALS couldn’t breach, this much was clear: This is a traditional bank branch.

So if you had X dollars in your bank marketing or credit union marketing budget to build a new branch, and thus had extremely high deposit goals riding on it, why would you choose to make it look like your competitors?

Imagine if I accompanied you into a bank branch (pick one, any one, because chances are, it falls into the “typical” category), and had you close your eyes while I hid all the logo’d materials, then had you reopen them. The truth is, you wouldn’t know what bank you were standing in. With an impression—or non-impression, I should say—like that, how can you expect to acquire new customers?

There’s piles of research that tells us consumers, in general, don’t like banks—period. Knowing that, why on earth do we keep building more of the same perpetuating, lackluster, blah experiences?

Someone please tell me why branches are built to look and feel so similar to one another. There’s a reason why The Gap looks nothing like Diesel, which looks nothing like a Nordstrom. Check out how Apple does it.

If you think I’m saying that all banks should go the retail route, then I’m terribly sorry, you lost my point. Geez.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Rants, Bank Marketing, Experiential Marketing, Credit Union Marketing, Bank marketing plan, Nordstrom Branding & Marketing, Apple Branding & Marketing. 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.