When I write, I sit down and pour it out. Many of you have remarked that it’s sometimes not even proofread and I’ve taken to forcing myself to re-read once before I publish to avoid that level of disrespect, but nonetheless it’s not my style to work on a piece for days on end. It either flows or it’s not worth writing. Not this one. This one needed a lot of research. Some of it was pleasant, but most of it was painful.
I would recommend you save this article for an evening when you can pour a cuppa and put your feet up. We all know what happens once you see one YouTube video …
It all started when I saw my first Nationwide commercial in a cinema this weekend, and found it moving. The only other one I could cite off the top of my head that I liked was HSBC’s Museum of Procrastination, which I loved so much I wished they’d hire that ad agency to run the whole bank, while all I could remember of Lloyds was that it had black horses. Having lived in the UK for more than two years, and having made a living from examining banks, this was a situation I needed to correct.
Seen the Best Dad #livingonyourside @AskNationwide commercial @barnaby_davis & teared up. Good stuff. Next blog theme commercials of #banks
— Duena Blomstrom (@DuenaBlomstrom) March 19, 2016
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I watched a good 80-100 commercials from the major UK banks (and one day, when I retire, I may do the same for all the major international retail banks) and initially intended to be utterly exhaustive (but wasn’t – the likes of Co-op and other smaller banks and building societies were left out), and diligently organized on scoring them based on audience, targeting ability, likability, clarity, and so on. As I was going, I realized my scoring system was far from foolproof. The idea wasn’t to conduct a scientific study, so all good intentions were replaced by how it made me feel as being the sole determining factor for the following list, so feel free to sharpen those ‘but we won an award with that one’ pitchforks.
8th (and last) place: Lloyds
Whose idea was it to have the creepy horses series, guys?
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This is as failed in its artsy pretentious tone as Barclays asking Samuel L Jackson to talk about chickens. Not that it’s your only painful one – the Take a Second campaign is cringeworthy – no one will give me back my three minutes of having to see this …
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While the low production values on the Filling Station TV advert and the Club Lloyds series kind of work, and functionally do what we expect them to (telling us we can get features), this brand new one is absolutely taking the cake as the worst I’ve seen …
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Not only has the angel of death horse returned, but the Mad World Donnie Darko soundtrack makes it extra creepy. Please stop!
7th place: Barclays
If you can afford Hollywood, why not use it? I hadn’t seen the Big one with Sir Anthony Hopkins, nor the Samuel L Jackson series, but neither made me feel anything at all.
Here’s one that made me feel something: the LifeSkills campaign, which is a mixture of emotions, and none of them positive; mainly awe at how far removed I must be from the millennials that are the target market that I cannot comprehend how they would find it anything but patronizing and condescending. Not to mention, it’s just objectionably badly made.
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I had to dig to the ends of the internet to find this very old Truman-Show-inspired Barclays commercial that wasn’t bafflingly bad , and dig out the only funny one from Pingit, but neither rocked my world.
6th place: RBS and NatWest
I found the following: the NatWest 1991 advert, the one time when RBS was funny on the old Less Talk campaign, and multiple NatWest haters who bothered to make songs about their dislike.
Yet, this Bills Reward account advert isn’t bad at all, as it’s all too relatable. Don’t we all have that one light switcher-off-er in the house?
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And this one is absolutely on point about what it feels like to pay with Apple Pay (when it works), even if it’s universal to all banks who offer it and nothing to do with NatWest in particular, as compared to this Lloyds one for Apple Pay that’s perfectly pointless.
All in all, I was stunned to see that for all the care Lloyds and HSBC take to try to make their portfolios discernibly individual with varying degrees of success, RBS and NatWest do none of that and are one big lump messaging-wise.
5th place: TSB
This makes me dizzy, but it’s worth seeing as a ‘true’ story of the community banking ethos. The current cartoons are underwhelming, but clear, and some may like them even though the new pointy characters are not as endearing as their Disney-like predecessors a few years ago. All in all, middle of the road and non-objectionable, but with something resembling a brand identity, hence why they deserve an entry of their own.
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4th place: Halifax
If you dig as far back as 2008, you find their corny but cute Something Good or the Who let the dogs out series, but then it had its Howard Brown lightbulb moment and it all changed for Halifax. A coup to make a regular employee a star: what better way to get people to feel intimately engaged in the story?
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These days, its X-tra kind of person series is sweet and well executed, and the Jargon Buster series is the only serious financial literacy attempt I’ve seen.
3rd place: Nationwide
I admitted already that I liked the Best Dad commercial a lot. By the way, watch this behind-the-scenes, which is a strike of genius on the part of the agency because it’s sweeter than the commercial itself. Then there’s the Annoying Bank Manager series and the iconic Ladies Little Britain.
The only negative is that when I found this commercial for impulse saving, it spoke to me so much that I downloaded the app, but evidently got nowhere with it as the ‘impulse save’ thing is only available to customers, and I have to go to a branch to become one, and bring 100 papers yadda yadda. What a missed acquisition opportunity – there was no reason not to let me set a saving goal before I signed in!
2nd place: HSBC, First Direct (and Atom!)
I went looking for Museum of Procrastination and still think it’s a stroke of genius that resonates with anyone. Yet, before I could enter another search term, the next video YouTube served me was ‘Panorama – HSBC the Bank of Tax Cheats’, which has 20k views as compared to the 4k the actual commercial has, which seems a bit unfair.
Nonetheless, I dare you to watch these two oldies on the importance of local knowledge and not laugh – the infamous Eels one and the Flowers one.
There’s a concerted effort at the heart of what HSBC does to tell stories and position itself as local, yet connected. This sadly still doesn’t make it a brand, simply a strong name with a good marketing story, or this quality of effort and thought would have trickled down to its customers, who, meanwhile, endure painful digital experiences. Its ad agencies, and wealth and retail marketing departments, should stage a coup and take over the whole thing and force its digital efforts into this century of technology. Heaven knows it needs it.
HSBC won awards for the genius Airport series, and if one had to choose a bank that did amazing on marketing, it would be HSBC in particular with its First Direct efforts. Whether you love or hate the black and white Platypus series, you can’t deny Mark Mullen is a marketing genius, and if you’re still not convinced, go to Atom’s website and click on ‘Uncomplicated’. Go on, do it, I’ll wait. Exactly! That’s why this category includes all three of these names.
First place: Santander
Adverts can be of two kinds really: either funny or heartstring pullers, and while most other English high street banks seem to dabble in both sequentially, Santander manages to do both at the same time, and that makes its overall message powerful. Who can deny that its take on getting a little bit more out of life is sweet, and more importantly how genius of a line is this: ‘Dads, keep on dadding‘.
Then there’s the continual effort and experimentation with viral. If you haven’t seen the campaign, look it up because the #SecretSantander stuff is so endearing, I’m proud to be their client. This one from 2014 and last year’s.
They say it’s ‘Simple, personal, fair’ – heartstringy, but then they also add a bite with ‘It’s what a bank should be’, and that spirit can be felt across the brand.
If that wasn’t enough, there’s one major reason why Santander wins this one for me, and if you watch none of the other videos, watch this one – it will make it all worthwhile, believe me:
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To be fair, none of these made me feel like my favourite bank commercial, or rather, bank-brand commercial – this one from CheBanca!, but then again someone suggested the other day that “it’s preposterous to presume such corny debauchery could be presented on English screens”, and that may well be the case.
Lastly (and most importantly), marketing isn’t branding, dear banks. It’s only a part of the overall impression you leave us with. The length of the phone queue and the music played, meanwhile, is branding. The carpets in the branch are branding, the words you choose when answering a customer on Twitter is branding, the way the mobile app feels helpful or annoying is branding, what your CEO looks like is branding (maybe Lloyds should have fared better now that I say that). All of it. Everything you do translates into an experience, and how that experience makes us feel is what your brand is like to us. I know you’re not confused about this, dear banks, as it’s a fairly simple concept, so don’t be using it as an excuse to be lazy and leave this to your marketing departments, which clearly already have enough trouble trying to make non-horrible adverts.
– This article is reproduced with kind permission. Some minor changes have been made to reflect BankNXT style considerations. Read more here. Image: Designed by Freepik.
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