Bailout Braggadocio


Have you noticed that Bank of America has settled in, looking doe-eyed at us whilst spamming our home phones recently? And Chase brands itself "New to California but not new to banking."

What a relief, do you need a roadmap then? I moved my accounts to another large bank after having identity fraud wipe my accounts clean 3 times in 2008. Lew McCreary was up late pondering this post from the Harvard Business Blog, a post called Bailout Marketing -- the Wrong Way.

2:40 AM Friday May 8, 2009
by Lew McCreary

Tags:Branding, Financial crisis, Marketing

What sort of marketing message makes sense for the modern post-apocalyptic lending institution?

Probably not this: I received a slick, expensive, 20-page brochure in the mail the other day from Bank of America, promoting its home loans and other excellent attributes. It was thick, colorful, printed on heavy (unrecycled) paper, with only a single "impact" word on several of the pages; my favorite of these was "Confidence," a clear case of whistling past the graveyard. My wife (a marketer) grabbed the thing, sniffed at it, and said, "My tax dollars at work."

Per Neilsen Online last year, here represented the largest ad spend for financial services:

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