The Story

I recently came across an eTrade ad that struck me at first simply as a funny bank advertising campaign. Clever. I liked it.

But the more I thought about it, I realized that it was more than just a great headline–it was an example of great positioning.

Think about it. With this headline, eTrade took such a simple, but completely different approach to marketing bank products than just about every other institution in the US. Instead of saying “we’re a better place to bank” (a ploy to get all or as much of your money and share-of-wallet as possible), they were essentially saying “we don’t want you to switch banks…just use eTrade ALSO!”

Consider how unique that positioning is. It’s brilliant, in my opinion. And like so many brilliant ideas, is so incredibly simple…but not something most bankers would even conceive of, let alone consider.

I immediately went to the etrade.com website to see where else this Polygamy Positioning was showing up, and sadly I found that it didn’t have much (if any) presence on the website. I think that’s too bad, because there’s a massive opportunity for this positioning to be effectively and completely differentiated.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Bank Branding, Kick Ass Ideas & Musings, Bank Marketing, 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.