If you follow these romps through the social underground, you may recall my piece a few days ago about a crass ad run by Barclays Bank.
Ann Lewis Scarff, a realtor in Las Vegas described my suggestion that banks are “Abdicating responsibility as a business objective” as “key words. Banking & advertising ties fiduciary responsibility and liability. With the mtg. meltdown & recession I’d love to hear how you would approach a positive ad approach for banking”.
She carried on, “Backing business for over 300 years” actually makes a bold statement in this economic climate” and suggests, “I’d put up a photo of the guy behind the old Cashier’s Cage bars holding cash & smoking a cigar…. you have to be a tough cookie to walk the line & still be successful in banking…”
Being a bit thick I don’t entirely understand everything she wrote, but if you want to do better advertising it’s a good idea to start with what most people are thinking.
First, any reader who bothered to notice the ad will have thought, “Who cares what you’ve been doing for 300 years? I’ve got my own problems right now – and the banks are no help.”
So you’d definitely have to ditch that boastful and quite exceptionally dull headline.
David Ogilvy called that sort of bragging flatulent puffery. Every competent copywriter knows it’s just as bad an idea in advertising as it is in real life.
A second thought would surely be, “Come off it. We know you thieving bankers have taken our money and are giving it out in massive bonuses rather than help businesses. Stop bullshitting me.”
I would return to the basics of copy which so few big agency copywriters are aware of.
One example is worth a mountain of claims. If they have been helping businesses, they should run ads telling who and how. Nothing else could hope to convince.
Just as the internet shysters can always bolster their claims with testimonials from the few people who have succeeded in making all that cash they promise, surely the banks must be able to find some customers they’ve helped.
Talking about dumb copy, a thing that’s just made me gnash my teeth is a message from a firm called Yodel. I suspect it is run by idiots, because their competence is at the same level as their copy: subterranean.
They were supposed to be delivering some coffee from Nespresso. We were out, so they left one of those irritating cards. The numbers to quote were so badly written I couldn’t decipher them. And nor could the lady I spoke to (at my expense) after pressing umpteen buttons.
It was finally established that they had sent nothing – or had no record of having done – to our address. So how did they leave the leaflet? Are there dwarves wandering round Clifton delivering leaflets at random?
But nothing in all this annoyed me as much as the message I got when I rang to sort out this mess, announcing that Yodel is “the new name for your delivery partner”.
Look, when I am trying to find out where something is I really don’t want some out of work actor wasting my money by spouting witless slogans.
I am not aware of having ever had a delivery partner or wanting one. I have business partners. I have a lady I sometimes call my partner because mistress is condescending and inaccurate, lover sounds silly – and boss, whilst accurate, is demeaning. I used to have partners for bridge. But I don’t want a delivery partner. There is no vacancy. Especially if that creature cannot deliver.
“What,” I asked the lady on the phone, “was the old name of my new delivery partner.”
“DHL,” she replied.
“Useless twats,” I muttered to myself. “That explains it. They were ashamed to say who they were before.”
Here’s a suggestion.
Thanks for another laugh on a Friday, Drayton. If people learned all the lessons you teach you might run out of material but I doubt that day will ever dawn. I'm too old to learn everything you know but I'm doing my best. Thanks as always.
Drayton, although your idea is sound in principle, I suspect
it wouldn't work because banks would be hard pushed to find a customer so
grateful they'd be happy to appear in an advert. Think of the personal ridicule
from their friends and colleagues for one thing. A client of mine convened a
group of financial directors from a selection of small and mid-sized companies
last week. One of the subjects was raising finance and every single one of them
said it was nigh-on impossible to raise funds via their bank. One who had was
charged £1m to raise £8m.
Thanks Glenda!________________________________________
closely linked to all this crap is the 'hip and edgy' so-called sales video with blurred focus or off angle shots showing various members of the management team talking drivel about paradigms accompanied by pseudo jazz muzak.
I'm trying to find a project portfolio management system (don't ask), but they're complicated to understand at the best of times for the hard of brain like me, and videos of the face-made-for-radio eejits spouting their 'mission' do NOT help me choose a vendor! (only soldiers have proper missions anyway – like “to kill or capture the terrorist” – my favourite)….And Drayton you might have seen it – what about that rubbish Barclays corporate ad with the 2 corner office creeps wandering along the beach in Dublin – strangely ironic as the tide had gone out – there was a whole series of them – total crap.
OK, let me get this right. You live in Clifton, which has a very high percentage of food shops and you get the Nespresso refills by mail order. Shame on you 🙂
Just as you mention about Sainsbury's and the current banking fiasco, there are two underlying problems, apart from changing you name when you do a crap job. 1 Lack of vision. Going cheap or bullying customers when you are up and they are down. Memories last beyond the situation and the perpetrators always suffer. 2 Lack of standards. Going offshore or creating fake fronts for your business leads back to lack of vision.
My bank has taken up the notion of having some illiterate Asian ring me up on weekend mornings. The other end of the phone can never pronounce my name properly and insists on a full forensic ID check, at which point he gets told to f#ck himself. Coincidentally, when I get into full rant mode, their supervisor is always in a meeting, which is usually finished when I start shouting and swearing. An easier and more enlightened job would be raise standards and recognise the future (ie vision), which may mean getting my bank manager to call me. Speaking of which, he answers his mobile and email to me but the offshore sales crets can never seem to be able to get through to him.
The best ad would be a picture of a banker with his pockets hanging out and the headline “Sorry … we fucked up”
I feel no shame. If you can persuade Nestle to sell their little capsules in retail outlests, you're a better man than me. Otherwise, I'm with you 300%