The Story

I’m pleased to introduce a new mini-series within The Story, called “Amusing Yet Disturbing.” In this series, I’ll share with you some of the “amusing, yet disturbing” questions, discussions and comments I come across from bank and credit union marketing folks. Why are these items both amusing and disturbing? Because they often show just how small-thinking, bandwagon-jumping and otherwise amateurish thinking. Amusing because the discussions are laughable. Disturbing because the conversations are posed seriously. I’ll leave out individual and company names to protect the blissfully ignorant.

Today’s amusing, yet disturbing topic is copied verbatim from a discussion group among bank marketers: “Sometime ago several of the members sent out scripts of their radio spots. Would anyone else be willing to share examples of your spots?“

I can practically hear how the conversation inside this bank went down: “Hey guys, I’ve got an idea…let’s do some radio ads! Why? Because that’s what banks do, duh! But let’s not reinvent the wheel here—let’s find out what some other banks have found successful. We’ll just swap out their name for ours and we’ll be good to go!”

This is like what Ron Shevlin recently referred to as Silverbulletitis. I’d coin a similar term and attribute this to Bandwagonitis—the idea that because a certain radio script works for Bank A in Texas means that it will work for Bank B in Connecticut.

Secondly, this request shows that the bank marketer simply wants to do radio advertising…and doesn’t even care what it’s promoting! It’s not as if the marketer asked “I’m looking for great radio concepts to promote mortgages.” That would have at least been a bit more respectable.

This is why companies exist to provide canned generic marketing campaigns—and sadly, probably make loads of dough.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Other, Bank Branding, Credit Union Branding, Bank Marketing, Branding, Credit Union 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.