In the City today I couldn’t help notice a new advertising campaign from BT Financial Group, one of the big local funds managers.

It’s promoting their superannuation (retirement savings) products and the part that I saw was the outdoor display ads.

There’s a whole series of these advertisements and they all have a question theme along the lines of…

“Do we really care more about organising our music than our super?”

“Every year the average Australian spends 40 days watching TV.  Why don’t we spend more time on our super?”

…and so on.

So what’s wrong with this?  Two things…

1) The questions are likely to produce a “Huh?” or “Who cares?” kind of response; and

2) They come across as “nagging”.  Look, this is one of those topics that most people know they should spend more time on, but it’s like better diet and exercise.  They never seem to get around to it and they don’t like being reminded of their failings.

Look, simply by the blanket coverage, this might make an impact and people who see the ads will have the idea that “They should do something about super” planted in their minds.  But they are not likely to take immediate action and most likely never will (even if they do, BT may well not be the beneficiary).

This is the classic kind of “brand awareness” ad that is basically a huge waste of money.  A shame because some of the supporting material for the campaign is quite good (I went and checked out the website as part of my research for this post).

So what would be a better copywriting approach?  Tricky, because as I said superannuation isn’t “top of mind” for most people. So finding Robert Collier’s “existing conversation” presents challenges.  However, making a direct appeal to the pocketbook is likely to be more effective (combined with a direct Call To Action, of course).

For example, “Discover how you can add $100,000 or more to your super account without making any additional contributions”.  Disclaimer here, in that I appreciate there are constraints on claims in advertising regulated financial products.  However, one way to increase the value of a superannuation account is to cut the fees that are paid.  And there are ways that a funds manager can help people do that.

While on the topic of dumb copywriting and advertising from big financial institutions, I came across this recently from French bank BNP Paribas…

“Embrace The Future With BNP Paribas.  The bank for a changing world.”

Yuk!  What is is with these guys?  I guess firstly, they have money to spend and are susceptible to flattery from smooth talking advertising agencies.  So bankers are absolute suckers for “image advertising”.

Secondly, despite the fact that banks make a lot of money, they don’t actually know much about marketing. Strange, but true, and to justify that outrageous statement I would need another quite lengthy post that I don’t intend to write just now.  Suffice to say that I worked in banking for over 20 years so I have some knowledge on the topic.

Of course, even that tagline from BNP Paribas isn’t quite as laughable as the campaign from my one time employer Societe Generale…

“Red, Black And Rising!”

The red and black refer to the bank’s corporate colours and the rising was supposed to refer to the bank’s increasing success and prominence (until they famously lost about US$4 billion at the beginning of 2008 as the result of a “rogue trader”).  But what on earth is this supposed to mean to a potential client?  Why would anyone want to do business with the bank because of this ad?

Absolutely the worst kind of “bragging” ad.  Amazingly, the campaign ran for several years.  Just as well they couldn’t measure the results and that at the time business was good (as it was for all banks, by the way).