The billboard was an eye-catcher: “Money for nothing and your checks for free.”
The sign was part of a campaign for the Washington Trust Company’s new Freedom Checking, a free checking product that paid customers up to $100 for signing up and using their accounts. The line was a twist on a 1980s rock hit.
And it worked, said Elizabeth B. Eckel, the bank’s senior vice president for marketing. People noticed. They laughed. They hummed the Dire Straits song as they drove on. The bank had been aiming for a younger demographic, and reached it.
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For 204-year-old Washington Trust, the third-oldest bank in the nation and a generally conservative institution, the billboard embodies a gentle image shake-up. It’s not that the bank is abandoning its traditions – it’s just adding youthful touches, starting with the go-getter tagline “Make it happen” under the old-fashioned logo.
“We’re not changing our culture, but as times change, you have to adapt a bit,” Eckel said in an interview. Washington Trust’s long history is an asset it will continue to promote, but it’s also using market research to appeal to new demographics.
This is the art and science of bank branding. Cars, breakfast cereals, even hotels and restaurants can establish their identity through the very nature of their products. But banking is more intangible. The products and rates are often quite similar. And everyone – from giant Bank of America, to the tiniest community banks – touts good service.
So who gets the customers?
First of all, it’s the familiar names – what Teresa McLaughlin, director of marketing for Citizens, called “the considered set.” If you’re not on customers’ minds, you won’t be an option. Once you’re on their minds, it helps if your message “resonates.”
That’s why Citizens has been so successful with “not your typical bank,” McLaughlin said. “It’s very relevant to the way consumers feel. They don’t want a typical relationship. They want a bank that’s going to treat them differently, better.”
And Citizens has made that message ubiquitous.
“It’s been a terrific tagline,” McLaughlin said. “Most people recognize it when you ask, who is ‘not your typical bank’?”
The message is only part of the task, however, marketers say. That’s because if customers’ experience is at odds with the ads, they will backfire. “You can’t go out there with a message that’s inconsistent with what people think of you,” said Eckel.
At Bank Rhode Island, James V. DeRentis, executive vice president for retail banking and marketing, said the bank’s positioning strategy permeates every aspect of its operations. BankRI’s branding focuses on the “high-touch, personalized attention” it believes makes it better for small- and mid-sized businesses than the “mega-banks,” for example. So behind the scenes, the bank works to ensure that it not only delivers the service it promises, but also that it has the products that business customers need, and can deliver them in the way customers want them.
“It’s not simply a clever advertising campaign that doesn’t have the infrastructure support to back it up,” he said. “We believe that you need to be delivering what you’re saying publicly, and we do that.”
At Citizens, McLaughlin said, “not your typical bank” is also built into every aspect of the bank’s operations, and serves as “a yardstick to measure everything we do.” It corresponds with the company’s “three C’s” philosophy – “customers, colleagues and community” – and with its (not literal) advice to employees to “hug the customer.”
In advertising, meanwhile, “not your typical bank” translates into offbeat, quirky billboards and the TV spots with “real-life” stories of Citizens employees going above and beyond for customers.
Citizens’ appeal is openly emotional and personal. Bank of America, on the other hand, which makes “customer delight” the goal for its employees, focuses on its institutional legacy (“the bank that built America”) and the motto “Higher standards.”
Bank of America’s introductory ads in the Fleet market are similarly businesslike: “By combining our two companies, we have greater resources, expertise and capabilities. And so do you.”
At Washington Trust, Eckel has more faith in the Citizens approach. “They’ve done a great job” with “not your typical bank,” she said, and Washington Trust is going in a similar direction with “Make it happen.”
“They’re talking about themselves,” she said. “Ours is more from the customers’ perspective. We can help you make it happen.”
That’s Citi’s approach, too, with “Live richly,” a motto built on the notion that Citi will help you enjoy life and forget money worries. And Sovereign Bank is taking a similar approach with its new “Milestone Banking” – a rebranding that packaged the bank’s existing products (along with some new ones) to fit with the “milestones” of customers’ lives: from heading to college, to buying a house, to retirement.
More and more, banks are also putting customers in their ads, especially to appeal to businesses. BankNewport is using “Business Success” stories, such as a testimonial from Lombardi’s 1025 Club. Washington Trust promotes its business products with customer photos, and also runs ads announcing new projects it is financing.
Bank Rhode Island has customers on TV, in print ads, and on the Web: the owners of Rustigian Rugs, Nick’s on Broadway, Gem Plumbing, Caserta Pizza and Ada’s Creations (for a TV spot in Spanish). “I wanted a bank that knows small business the way I know rugs,” one ad quotes Roz Rustigian.
“You don’t have the bank telling you what it offers; you have the customer telling you: ‘That’s what banking at Bank Rhode Island has done for me,’” DeRentis said.
