Creating value, not TV ads

Simple value for money can attract more customers than paid advertising these days

By Simon van Wyk

Back in January this year when CBA launched its highly anticipated new television ad campaign from American advertising powerhouse Goodby Silverstein & Partners, it created uproar in our industry and generated an enormous amount of discussion and blog posts.

The ads of course were different if not unique, presenting a sardonic take of the bank working with its newly appointed, if culturally challenged American advertising agency as they tried to steer them away from one cringe-worthy gaffe to another.

When the commercial appeared on YouTube, bloggers went into overdrive, unsure as to whether it was a joke or the real thing.  Everyone had a point of view.  CampaignBrief.blogspot.com alone received a flurry of comments that varied from complimentary: “Absolutely awesome... this will get the consumers attention... perfect, single-minded idea..”; to flippant: “Nice way for the bank’s marketing people to get a few business class flights to LA and meet Michael Bay...hope the in-flight movies were good”; to downright scathing: “Well this goes to show that - as the ad also suggests - the Comm Bank marketing team are just a bunch of fools”.

And I certainly raised an eyebrow when I read in The Sydney Morning Herald at the time of the campaign launch that Mark Buckman, the Commonwealth Bank’s marketing director, was actually avoiding calling the ad an ad. “This is an entertainment device through which we are delivering Commonwealth Bank messages.”  And the ad agency was claiming: “This is new for us; it certainly feels like content rather than advertising”.

But whilst everyone was dissecting this campaign and voicing their admiration or venting their derision (and it was mostly disdain) I think a much bigger and important question was being overlooked. 

Why is any bank these days spending millions of dollars on creating TV ads in a world that is increasingly digitally and technology-driven?  Especially when the goal is to create value for customers, not bombard them with marketing messages.

And with the proliferation of new ways of lending, borrowing, saving and investing gaining mass market appeal, the once hallowed ground of core bank products and services is now quite a different playing field.

When you look at the new crop of agile, web-based financial services companies like Wesabe and Mint, or P2P lending sites like Prosper, Zopa and Virgin Money, they all make it easy for people to engage with them and they provide a valuable experience.

Overseas, even venerable old-fashioned banks like Bank of America, Royal Bank of Canada and Wells Fargo are joining their more agile counterparts experimenting with social platforms to help their customers make more sense of their financial position and empower them with knowledge rather than confuse them with data. 

Bank of America welcomes its customers with peer reviews, and provides a platform for its small business customers to network with each other, providing a wonderful thriving and dynamic small business community.
Mint for example, helps consumers by searching through thousands of offers from a large number of financial services companies to find the best deals on bank accounts and credit cards as predetermined by the customer’s individual spending behaviour.

When you compare this new generation of financial services offerings to standard banking practices and frustrating and complex customer experience, it’s little wonder the new companies are making their mark.

As peer influence continues to grow in popularity, along with massive growth in the adoption of social applications, banks are increasingly exposed to less-forgiving customers.  And ones that don’t fall for the latest 30 second advertising spot.

Isn’t it high time for banks to start to look at marketing in this new way?  It’s time to concentrate marketing on creating value and not simply delivering advertising messages. With the speed of word-of-mouth information sharing and the proliferation of options, reviews and comparisons, customers do not need advertising like they used to.  People are influenced by value. 

So why aren’t more Australian banks launching innovative products and services, and using the power of the network to help market these new innovations rather than following conventional marketing techniques?  After all, a recent Gallup survey revealed that as little as one in five respondents said that they had a great deal of trust in their financial institution. Of course consumers, in general, have little trust in the firms they do business with across all industries.  But using marketing dollars to create valuable services rather than marketing messages would surely make sense.

Simon van Wyk is founder and managing director of HotHouse Interactive ­– the company that builds businesses online.