The Story

Dan and Chip Heath, the progressive authors of the popular “Made To Stick” book, recently documented the importance of thinking outside the box, by thinking inside the box in their recent Fast Company article, “Get Back In The Box.” The article leads-off by discussing the idea from a bank manager to redesign its bank and how to go about performing that seemingly huge undertaking. Instead of proceeding with the idea that the bank’s branch should “be more like Starbucks and less like a post office,” the Heath boys stress the notion that creativity lies within the walls, for example, of the bank.

To be the Starbucks of the banking world is a great vision, but it puts limitations to the vision of what the bank can and should be. My further understanding of the article is that the vision of the bank should start with a clean slate. That is, no real pre-conceived framework. We applaud this idea at CBC as we work with financial institutions to discover themselves first (i.e. Find The Story), before we paint the blank canvas. This allows the creativity to begin, but within relevant walls (or box) of the bank and its brand identity.

In other words, unique bank marketing doesn’t necessarily mean thinking outside the box, but rather thinking inside the bank and its true brand.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 8:59 am and is filed under Bank Branding, Bank Marketing, Branding, Starbucks 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.