R.U.B.O.Q.?

A few days ago, the Bank of Queensland launched this re-brand.

And since then – and like many launches of late – it's attracted mixed reviews, most notably here.

So I thought I'd add my own thoughts into the mix with this comment that I left on Mumbrella:

I've been interested to read the discussion here about this campaign and the idea behind it, but it seems everyone is focusing on the issue from a purely visual perspective or in terms of production. And ignoring the fact they've changed their name from Bank of Queensland to BOQ, as well as the potential reasons why – which is a pretty big deal.

When it comes to choosing names – for babies or banks – it's always difficult. But what's even more intriguing about this case is that while their campaign is all about being small and personal, their change of name says exactly the opposite.

Firstly, choosing an acronym is the surest way to strip any emotion and meaning from a word. Acronyms typically lack personality and make it hard for people to remember what they stood for in the first place. Which, unfortunately, does not resonate with their new tagline "Your own personal bank".

Secondly, it's interesting to think about why they switched to an acronym. The likeliest reasons are more to do with a commercial rather than a creative strategy. They want to put some clear water between the brand and the word "bank", as well as lose the restrictions that come with the geographical tag "Queensland".

In other words, this isn't about getting smaller, this is about getting bigger. Much bigger.

So what will it be? A small, local bank with the personal touch? Or, an international institution that hides behind a faceless acronym? Looks like they're keeping their options open for now.

The worst salesman in the west (and other tales from the financial frontier)

The ANZ branch on the corner of George and King in the Sydney CBD is a grand, olde worlde affair. Cavernous ceilings, wood panels, and lots of columns. I love this type of classical architecture, even if it can be a little formal.

A couple of months ago, set against the swarming crowds just beyond the doors on George Street, it seemed I wasn't the only one taken in by my surroundings. Pretty much everyone there explored the space with a quiet chorus of eager eyes as they patiently waited their turn.

Eventually, my turn came and I made my way to the counter – feeling a little like an extra in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. (Okay, so I have a fairly wild imagination.)

I handed over my deposit, the teller followed the usual process, and he then handed me my receipt.

But, once he'd done so, events took a strange turn.

The teller took a furtive look left, then right, and then leaned carefully across the counter towards me.

I wondered what this was all about and my brain instinctively offered up the following options:

1. He was about to offer me illegal drugs.

2. He was going to ask me if I knew of any good job openings.

3. He wanted to let me know that Butch and Sundance were standing right behind me, their guns loaded.

(Yes, I know, a very wild imagination, but believe me, this is exactly how it happened from my point of view.)

As it turned out, I was wrong on all counts.

The ANZ teller leaned carefully across the counter, looked me in the eye and asked if I had considered an ANZ credit card. With 55 days interest-free. In fact, there was even a special offer that waived the joining fee. And finally, he offered a second card at no extra price.

I took the receipt for my deposit and headed straight for the huge doors and into the anonymity of the lunchtime crowds, still swarming in the midday sun.

What had been a very pleasant, swift and efficient exchange up until that point had taken what I considered to be an ugly turn. I had gone to the bank to deposit my money as quickly and simply as possible. And I had all but done that when the teller slipped into what had to be one of the clumsiest and most ill-timed attempts to cross-sell me that I have ever encountered.

In the same way that when I go to the supermarket checkout, I want to pay for my goods not buy some more, so when I go to the teller window in a bank to deposit my money, I want to reduce my debt not add to it.

And over the past few weeks since then, it's been happening more and more as banks mobilise their army of window watchers to sell anything and everything to whomever walks in the doors. What really destroys the whole experience – above and beyond the sheer nuisance value – is the fact that they don't appear to have had any training. At ANZ, the teller's demeanour was hardly that of a slick salesman, and more recently at NAB, they tried to offer me a savings account for any cash sitting in the account that offsets my mortgage, but at a lower interest rate and one that would in fact have put me in a worse financial position. And, again at NAB when I was there earlier this week, the teller skipped any sort of polite introduction and launch straight into a spontaneous list of products. Credit card? Home insurance? Car insurance? Car loan? And so on. It was as though he was trying to guess my star sign.

I know that banks have never been anyone's favourite brand. But it's not that I don't like them, I just wish they would leave me alone.

Sending customers into a spin

Customers all over Australia have been sent into a bit of a spin this week – in pretty much every sense of the word.

It was Westpac who launched the downward spiral with an interest rate rise almost double that of the Reserve Bank, but things then plummeted to new lows with an animation emailed to customers that was a journalist's wet dream in the otherwise quiet pre-Christmas season.

Twitter was also abuzz, with my favourite being @bigriveroz who wrote: "hey westpac, last time i checked, the local cafe selling banana smoothies didn't make $3.4b while in a cosy cartel protected by the govt".

And it didn't end there. CEO Gail Kelly hit the press the next day to spruik the importance of customer service and the bank's commitment to relationships and reliability. But it was sheer folly for Westpac to try to promote the positive side of the bank sharing their problems with customers, especially as most of the positives seem to have taken the shape of profits sprinkled with the odd bonus. In the same week, reports from the Fairfax stables were suggesting an annual $2.6m cash bonus for Kelly's efforts alone. It's often said that money makes the world go round, but by now the insensitivity was making most people a little dizzy.

However, insensitivity seems to be a popular character trait for most customer service departments around Australia. In my case, it was Foxtel, the 900-pound gorilla of subscription TV, trying to cosy up to me with some sweet talk this week.

Let me give you the background. After months of frustration, I'd finally decided to send a short email to Foxtel to complain about a problem with my service. To be perfectly honest, it was more of a quibble than a problem. However, Foxtel's holier-than-thou advertising paints a vivid portrait of suburban delight, which only serves to grate on me even more when things go wrong.

The return call from customer services started well – the female voice at the other end of the phone seemed helpful and happy to talk.

However, when it quickly became obvious that the best she could do was a paltry "Yes, it's annoying for me too!", I started to wonder whether the point of her call was to sympathise with me, but not actually do anything.

I responded with a polite pitch for service not sympathy, but she immediately hit me out of the park with another gem: "If I help you, I have to help 1.7 million people".

And when I touched a couple of light volleys over the net to see if she would even acknowledge some level of responsibility, she gamely responded with a barrage of cross-court forehands that offered tips but no fix, and I found myself pinned at the back of the court, waving my racket in vain as the ball quite literally spun out of control.

Taking pity on me for a fleeting moment, she did offer a free copy of the Foxtel magazine. However, when I suggested that Foxtel might want to consider making this a monthly occurrence, she threw her racket to the ground in frustration, telling me that she simply didn't have the time to be able to make that happen.

I finally teed up another ball, only for her to shout at the top of my backswing that "I could downgrade my subscription if I wanted". I looked up for a split second in sheer astonishment – how could getting even less possibly be a helpful solution? Needless to say, I completely missed the ball, and my humiliation at the hands of Foxtel's customer service was complete.

I'm not quite certain at what point the phone call became more about Foxtel than me, but it reminded me that businesses like Foxtel and the banks appear to be more about profit than people. I'm all for success in commerce, but surely customers should be the linchpin of that success, rather than have it come at their cost.

I still don't know when Foxtel plan to fix my little quibble.

But maybe that's because there are obviously much bigger problems facing their customers which they need to fix first.

Just show me how to switch it on

In the past few months, I've been working on a few brand and product launches. From an agency angle, there's only so much you can do to influence the outcome as you tend to make recommendations more often than decisions.

Launching a brand is like giving birth. It's vital to remember that it's the start of something wonderful, not just the end of the most painful experience of your life.

But all too often when it comes to brands, people focus purely on the latter: let's just get it out there and hope everything will work out fine. Oh, and the quicker the better.

Job done.

But actually the job is not done, it has only just begun. Much like babies, brands do not function on autopilot. And it's not simply a question of switching them on.

Firstly, things change.

Constancy is a rare luxury in today's world, but too many people assume that tomorrow will be much like today. Call it myopic, call it a fear of the future, call it sheer stupidity, but change can often touch a raw nerve. "Launch a brand to last for the next 10 years" is a common cry, when what they actually mean to say is "design a logo and let's pray that nothing changes between now and the time I leave for my next job".

The reality is that change can provide overwhelming opportunities to carve out competitive advantage. Just ask any of the bank brands that have pounced on the weak and the weather-beaten to turn a bad situation into a better one. It goes without saying that the banks would have preferred constancy and that change has been forced upon them, but struggling against change is tough (if not impossible), and there is more to be gained from funneling the winds of change than trying to force them back.

Your industry will shift. Your customers will change. Your brand will mature. But will you evolve? Or will you simply stick to the brief, work to the deadline and, as soon as you have flicked the switch, put all your faith in fate and fickle fortune? I hope not.

Secondly, people have short memories.

It doesn't matter how many balloons fill the room at the launch party, pretty soon no one will remember the helium from the hot air.

Customers actually deal with change pretty well. They tend to take it all in the stride because they've seen it all before. The packaging has changed, there's a sticker screaming "new" and "improved", and all of a sudden, as a merchant, you've got a reason to score some extra shelf space in the supermarket.

But if there isn't a real and relevant reason to keep consumers interested, they will all too quickly switch off, or switch onto something more appealing. Brands need to keep giving people reasons to stay loyal and come back, not simply expect that past sales curves are an accurate reflection of future sales performance. The first impression that you make does count, but not quite as much as the last one that you leave them with. You only have to look at Nike to see how a brand can stick to the same story but retell it in so many fresh and different ways – and ways that not only stretch to new audiences but even reach out to new generations.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, brands live forever.

While a sale is simply a transaction, a brand is an experience. And experiences create memories – good and bad, fond and forgettable.

In fact, you don't really own your brand, your customers do. They are the ones who make the real decisions about whether you succeed or fail with every move that they make. They decide how loyal they will be, they decide between you or your competitors, they decide what they will tell their friends about you.

Your role is to influence their decisions. And it should come as no surprise that those decisions don't all get made at the very moment that you launch your brand. Far from it.

So that's it. You can't just switch on a brand one day and expect it to light up the sky the next. I know that sounds obvious, but then too often I see brands built to launch, but not necessarily last.

Pumping up the tyres of the recession

People typically reveal themselves when under pressure.

The recession is putting a good many businesses under a fair amount of pressure. I, for one, think that can only be a good thing, but it is enlightening to see how differently the reactions range.

Take financial institutions.

Most have simply screeched to a halt, blinded in the headlights of the oncoming issues. This generation of bankers haven’t really had to make tough calls before about their futures before because all roads seemed to be paved with gold and it was simply a question of degrees of success. And when it came to their brands, as long as the business card was embossed with gold leaf on a weighty stock, none of them really cared. If they happen to have pulled over carefully to the side of the road, they might be able to avoid scrutiny, but if they find themselves at a busy crossroads, it’s likely they’ll get caught in the pile-up.

Many have taken a more dogmatic view. Hunkering down in the comfort of their most recent bonus, they are simply hoping that it will all go away before they have to change their habits. The machine is still full steam ahead, but no one is particularly keen to take the wheel, or even look over the dashboard. And if they do crash, there is a clear belief that the combination of size and sheer momentum will carry their brand through to the other side with only some minor abrasions and maybe a slow puncture.

There are a few that have decided to trade their vehicle, as it were, for a slightly different model. Maybe it’s a different colour, or maybe it’s a more substantial change like smaller engine capacity or lighter fuel consumption. Whatever the difference, they’re trying valiantly to tune their brand to the times without necessarily going so far as to forego it altogether for a completely different vehicle. It’s a sensible strategy, at least for the fact that it’s a little more considered.

And finally, they’re a small number that have decided that to put their foot down and either ram their competitors off the road or car­–jack them at the next set of lights. It’s not pretty, but it’s basic marketing instinct for those who want their brand to prosper not just survive.

But it’s not just financial institutions that find themselves driving their brand manually when they have only ever cruised along in automatic. The recession has hit everyone in different ways. From FMCG to fashion, cars to airline carriers.

That said, a recession doesn’t simply have to be about going backwards, quite literally receding. There are as many advantages as there are disadvantages to be gained by choosing to go forward, even if it may require a small sideways step to get you started.

You might need a push from some friends, maybe a jump–start from an unexpected passer–by, or there might even be a free tank of fuel in a competitor’s abandoned brand.

Anyway, I promise that’s the first and last time I’ll write about the recession. I find them incredibly tedious affairs as everyone (1) gets incredibly anxious at the slightest twinge, and then (2) feels the need to talk about the importance of investing in a downturn with the same fervent passion as a man who has just discovered crack cocaine and is absolutely certain that no one will ever get this high again.

That’s it. No more recession talk. I promise. (Except for a presentation to a client next week – their idea, not mine.)