Seen this ad at the movies a few times recently. I confess it had me wondering what it was all about…
https://youtu.be/079qcLQkq1M
When I first saw this, my initial thoughts were that it was a trailer for some kind of “Villagers abducted by aliens” type of show. Or…perhaps creepy pagan ritual going on in remote village, something like that.
But no! It’s all about that nice Lloyds Bank…who presumably sponsor some sort of “Running of the horses” festival each year!
What this appears to be about is Lloyds wanting to make customers feel all warm and fuzzy about them, strengthen their relationship and…presumably…build trust.
So, this editorial from the 15 June 2018 issue of “MoneyWeek” may come as a bit of a shock…
The editor-in-chief mentions the book “No Small Change: Why Financial Services Needs a New Kind of Marketing”.
Talking about trust…
“There are, say the authors, two different elements to this trust. There is competence – can you trust a given institution to sort your mortgage, keep your savings safe, pay out your pension, and return your investments when you ask it to? The second is about intention. Do we believe that the institutions in question have our best interests at heart?
The answer to the first question is mostly yes; to the second, almost always no. That is probably impossible to change.”
Whoa! So good luck Lloyds Bank! Given that they are probably not tracking results in any case…the bad news that this ad is most likely a complete waste of money will probably never reach them.
So…how should financial institutions be advertising? The authors of “No Small Change” suggest that the best way to sell products is not through touchy-feely stuff but by being clear on competence. Have simple, transparent, low-cost products with structures everyone can understand well enough to see where they are and are not being ripped off, and thus have trust in.
As an example of the opposite approach…step forward Vitality. The company has recently launched a range of investment products, where there is a “Healthy Living Discount” available. Do various healthy things and the charges will be cut. According to the company, the goal is to “…incentivise simple behaviour changes to encourage people to live healthier lives while saving more”. It’s about combining investments and wellness, apparently.
This sort of thing takes me back to my time in the financial services business where there was a school of thought that by adding various attractive “features” (that didn’t really cost very much) to a standard type of product, you could charge a higher fee and nobody would notice. In some cases, there is genuine value for customers but a lot of the time it’s not really worthwhile.
A few years back, the great Drayton Bird produced a special report titled “Selling Money’ about using direct mail in marketing financial services. One of the points he made was that “Money is a serious business. People’s livelihoods and futures depend on it.” So, treat people like adults. All too many firms seem to think they can bamboozle people in one way or another. Sadly, the Lloyds bank ad is an example of this…and the company could actually do better.