I don't want a friend - just a bank that knows its place.
Hi. You look nice today, says a big ASB billboard outside the Newmarket ASB. Oh do sod off. I look haggard and frazzled and have had to schlep all the way down Broadway in the stinking hot sun because my Eftpos card got declined while buying my mother a birthday present.
I do not want to be patronised by presumptuous bank advertising with smiley faces exhorting me to build my future.
"I don't mind if you only want me for my money" titters the screen of the Eftpos machine. Actually, you impertinent machine, here's the thing: it's my money in there, not yours.
I enjoyed hating banks in a halfhearted way before ASB's fey new campaign but now I think they are emotionally illiterate, and a little bit passive aggressive as well as greedy and arrogant. And did I mention plain evil?
Bank executives apparently live on the Planet Zog where they think punters are going to forget that Sir Ralph Norris earns A$16 million ($20 million) a year if you assault them with a few yellow smiley faces (AMI Insurance, anyone?), some whimsical slogans and talk about making babies. Apparently, the new campaign was "co-created" using input from customers who apparently told the bank they wanted it to "deepen the relationship between us by understanding and forming connections with their aspirations and dreams". Ya think? Most people I know don't want their bank to be their life coach; they would just like it to be a smidgen less usurious.
Granted, ASB is not alone; all bank advertising is gormless. For all the talk about branding, it is just colours really. National Bank is green, ANZ pale blue, BNZ dark blue, Westpac red, Kiwibank lime green and ASB Bank is yellow. Big whoopee. That is why the endless Goldstein campaign for ASB was so tediously long running - it had a bit of personality.
The new campaign is not only faceless but insulting. There have been a stack of complaints about one particular ad which boasts that ASB has special services for couples who want to borrow money for IVF treatment. As it went to air a PR person for the bank rang me and asked me if I might like to write about this exciting initiative since they knew I had had fertility treatment "and you write about your personal life". Aw, shucks, that made me feel so warm inside, but no thanks. I said I thought the venture was more likely to be interpreted as the bank exploiting vulnerable wannabe parents.
But to be fair, since Goldstein was launched, people's attitudes to banks have changed and there is little goodwill left, no matter how charming the ads. We know the role that banks played in creating the credit bubble which almost brought down the global economic system. We know, as they do in Ireland, that it is the normal punters who have ended up paying the price for the hubris of the narcissistic moneymen.
We know that banks don't really take calculated risks in lending anymore - take a guess how much IVF money ASB will lend to someone who doesn't have the assets or cashflow to cover it? Yet They still make gargantuanhuge profits as if they are taking a punt.
So I don't really know why banks bother with mainstream advertising. Rather than being delighted and amused by your advertising I feel angry.
If you want to make customers start to genuinely trust their bank, let alone like it, you will have to try a lot harder than fake compassion and hollow compliments.
dhc@deborahhillcone.com
This story has been changed from an earlier version, which incorrectly linked AA Insurance to an advertising campaign involving 'yellow smiley faces'.
