10 Stupidly Easy Steps - to financial sector advertising.

on Nov 08 in Advertising, Strategy tagged by Peter Blackman

I’m about to risk offending a lot of people. Real people. The real people who are the stars of a wholly unwelcome trend in financial sector advertising and marketing at the moment. The stupid trend. Here’s a hugely simplistic truncation of what must have been a very long research and strategic analysis process for the marketing departments and advertising agencies of the major UK banks.

1. Everyone hates us.

2. Everyone blames us.

3. Everyone thinks we were greedy and invented ever more complex financial products in order to hide debt and maximise profits.

4. We had to be bailed out by the taxpayer (return to point 1)

5. We need to rebuild trust (protect our bonuses and profits)

6. The best way to do this is to hide the fat cat bankers and shove our call centre and counter staff to the forefront of all our advertising. After all - they’re real people and real people will identify with real people won’t they? So let’s get real.

7. We’ll make them sign a charter. Work Saturdays. Staple smiles onto their faces until it kills us, or them. In return they can appear in the advertising. They’re cheaper than actors anyway.

8. We’ll make them look real and warm and human. As if they actually were all of these things. Not funny ha ha you understand. We don’t want to appear as if we don’t take the acute financial concerns of the average consumer seriously.

9. We won’t mean to (or maybe we do, aha ha ha ha ha), but we’ll make it look as if our staff are trustworthy because they’re a little bit dim. Reassuringly simple. How can we hope to defraud / exploit you when these people couldn’t think their way out of getting a job which means wearing a polyester uniform?

10. So that’s clear then? Leave your money with us. Accept our reluctance to lend as we have to pay ourselves (a lot) and all these smiling happy real people (a little). You can trust us. Well, you can trust them. But then again, they’re not in charge of your money. We are.