The current ANZ ad campaign has left us scratching our heads. The first ad we saw featured a lot of people with what looked like mobilés on their heads – you know: those things you hang up in nurseries to amuse babies. Eventually the bits fall off people’s heads and the take home message is that ANZ MAKES BANKING SIMPLE.
The next commercial we saw features a revolting woman called Barbara who abuses a poor sod of a customer, then she keys something into her computer, saying she’ll sign him up for something he didn’t even ask for. When he protests feebly, she says: too late, and further protests are answered with: I’m busy, I’m the manager, I’m in a meeting and I’ll put you onto an automated voice system ...’ Finally she tells him to go away.
In yet another commercial, she abuses a young woman and tells her to go away. The take home message? BARBARA LIVES IN BANK WORLD. WE LIVE IN YOUR WORLD.
We were curious and checked the web, where we found that ANZ Bank had paid MC Saatchi $15 million for a new logo, a new tagline and the ad campaign. http://www.news.com.au/business/new-brand-and-logo-to-cost-anz-15-million/story-e6frfm1i-1225790269154
We’ve long suspected that we’re in the wrong end of this business, charging clients a few thousand dollars for a lead generation campaign or a website revision, and a few hundred for a tagline. We really work hard on our taglines, and we know a little about how to craft them http://www.technoledge.com.au/pdfs/branding3.pdf . At the very least, we know enough to know that WE LIVE IN YOUR WORLD doesn’t cut it.
And the logo? Haven’t we seen those style elements somewhere before? Decades ago?
Graham and Friends have a funny take on the logo, so we’ll leave you in his capable hands http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfgx5czpeJc
Back to Barbara. Writers of novels are familiar with the term verisimilitude, which describes a semblance of truth or reality. The curious thing with this term is that it applies to all stories, from church sermons to jokes to TV commercials. Why? Simple: Unless they relate to some element of your reality, you will not relate to them. The ANZ commercials describe banks which don’t exist, and didn’t even exist in the bad old days. As a result, the commercials don’t speak to anyone.
Another rule in our marketing book is that a message must touch on a pain some members of your audience feel and want relief from. The ANZ commercials don’t do that. The pain the poor sod in the commercial feels is not a pain we can relate to, because our banks don’t treat us like that.
So the ads miss the mark. A waste of millions. Only a few months before this campaign was launched, Westpac was running the infamous commercial that tried to explain its interest hikes with some fairy tale about a storm hitting a banana plantation. That ad was just as wide of the mark, and just as silly.
Does it matter? No. Do Mike Smith or Gail Kelly lose sleep over ludicrous advertising campaigns they paid $15 million for? No. Why not? We have four major banks in this country, and they make billions from us, effective marketing or not. Every one of us knows that they’re all the same, and that their attempts to differentiate themselves are as laughable as a decade of BP’s greenwashing, but they have to keep up appearances.
Kim
