Choo Choo! In chugs our next worst of the week on a playland train! Why do banks make such easy marks when it comes to bad marketing? A friend of AdMavericks pointed us to this gem earlier this week in the Des Moines Register from Earlham Savings Bank. 
At first glance, I thought this ad was for a daycare or the zoo! Happy faces blocking out the actual faces of real customers on the “E-Train” is a nice effect! Is this because these people don’t want to be associated with the bank? I also noticed that the headline says “On Track Since 1931″ … however, there seems to be no track in Magical Rainbow Land! The only other messaging in this ad talks about how the bank is “locally owned and here to stay” as opposed to the other couple dozen local banks and credit unions in this market that are planning on leaving soon (Vantus Bank seems to have been the only bank that tried differentiating by leaving the market). Then, let’s close this ad off with our call to action and lead them to our website so they can be wooed by our online marketing savvy, right? WRONG!
EBank’s website gives me no reason to want to bank with them. Sure they’re local. Sure they’re committed. Sure they’re trying to say they’re green because they’d rather save money sending statements online vs. printing and mailing them each month. But that’s exactly what every other bank does as well (although I haven’t quite seen the “green” angle pushed using an animated frog jumping across the site navigation like it is if you dig very deep into the EBank website).
The banking industry is in the midst of an evolution. Look at companies like SmartyPig, Prosper, Kiva, Mint. These are companies that are revolutionizing the financial world – and changing the way people think about banking. Just because you’ve been in the banking business since 1931 doesn’t mean you’re going to continue to survive the changes that are happening.
If I’m EBank (or any financial institution for that matter), I’m taking a step back and looking at how people and the industry is changing. I’m engaging them using social media. I’m developing – or at least figuring out ways to provide my customers new products and services that not everyone else in town is offering. I’m not sitting behind the desk with my feet up, hoping that my 10-year-old investment in my website will hold up long enough for a few other local banks to fold so I can get my share of what’s left. And I’m surely not running marketing programs that I can’t measure to determine if they are working or not. How does EBank measure the Rainbow Land Train ad’s effectiveness? I’m guessing they don’t.
Are we picking on EBank today? Sure we are. Does the same thing apply to a whole bunch of companies? You bet … and we’re coming to get you soon! After all, our job is to help companies be good marketers – so they can be more profitable … and hopefully pay us handsomely for our ideas so we can dump gobs of money into an innovative local bank … a bank like we hope EBank will be soon!
Congrats to EBank, you’re our worst of the week.
Author: AdMavericks
www.lessingflynn.com
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