If someone fucked you, why would you trust them again after 30 seconds?
Satirist Dan Ilic has a thing or two to say about the Australian Banking Association's 'Australian banks belong to you' campaign, which launched back in November.
With record profits that look greedy and facing down the barrel of a Royal Commission that fielded so many complaints of misconduct, they missed a reporting deadline.
There’s no doubt about it – Australians have a feeling they are being screwed by the banks.
In terms of a BS detector, there’s none better than the Australian general public.
So knowing this, back in November, the Australian Banking Association tried to placate the BS sniffing Australian general public in the most old-school way possible. A television commercial.
Hooray. Lol.
The message is “Hey we’re banks, and we’re owned by shareholders, and shareholders are Australians. SO LAY OFF US OKAY? WE’RE ONLY SCREWING THE PEOPLE WHO CAN’T PAY US BACK—CAPICE?”
It’s a nice message on a quaint medium, television, which I’m sure is still watched by the baby boomers and older, who, if they have done well in their lives, could very well hold shares in your bank – that is before a Royal Commission.
For young people who may not own shares, the message will never reach them.
Yet the banks will spend all of this money on television campaigns (production and media buy) that only an older generation will ever see when they could channel some of that money into platforms and other media that actually provide value for audiences.
It’s like the idea of soft power, a term used in international relations where countries exert influence and persuasion of other countries using their cultural assets like the US does with movies and or Germany does with Eurovision.
I find it baffling, that the banks with their record billion-dollar profits don’t invest in creating meaningful and useful culture for their own customers.
One of the simple things that a bank could do is build trust by creating podcasts.
The special thing about audio as a medium is that an enormous trust develops between the listener and the broadcaster.
If trust is your problem, then developing a special relationship with your audience, an intimate relationship, seems to be a much better way of communicating with them rather than spamming their televisions with 30-second ads proclaiming how just like me you are.
I also had a $6.1 billion EBITDA result this quarter!
It’s not a quick fix like a television campaign — it’s a long relationship you have to build from scratch. But done right, a podcast that is informative, instructional and provides a backchannel for customers to discuss their problems too would be an incredible product that is not only a potent marketing tool for the financial institution who does it first, and does it right in this country but also fill a huge gap in the Australian podcast market out there.
Dan Ilic is an Australian presenter, comedian and filmmaker. This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.
Great headline!
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You must be a comedian media planner. Podcasts to save banks. Laugh I did.
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NOT. FUNNY. DAN.
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Shit headline. Throw the F word in there – bound to get attention. Try to be nicer, Dan.
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You’ll actually find the ad on YouTube, all the catch up channels and across popular websites in a display banner form..:
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I only fuck people I trust
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The interesting thing about this campaign is that it seeks to make the general public complicit in corporate greed. Greed for the public good.
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Yeah, it’s not just on quaint TV, which incidentally reaches millions of Australians.
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Tell me more about these podcasts produced by banks, I’ve almost finished reading my product disclosure statement for my insurance, so these podcasts will surely get my blood racing.
Here’s a more efficient way for banks to win over younger customers. Stop being greedy, selfish baby boomers who brag about share prices and quarterly earnings through constantly reducing their workforce so they can flaunt their bonuses.
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If you’re in the workforce, you’re in a superannuation fund. If you’re in a super fund, you’re into bank shares. Be thankful.
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The title should have been “If somebody fucked you over…”
Your title has a different meaning.
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One US commentator recently wrote that there is a ‘need for ideas and language that evoke the sublime, not gutter talk that pollutes so much conversation today’.
That headline neatly fits into the second part of this observation.
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