ANZ’s sour Barbara sounds awfully familiar…
Tony Richardson’s guest posting about ANZ’s new TV ads with the sour bank employee Barbara has certainly kicked off debate on Mumbrella.
And as one of our posters has pointed out, it’s a similar campaign tactic that’s been employed by Nationwide Building Society in the UK in recent years.
But has it been more effective for Nationwide than ANZ when you take into account the believability factor?
As one poster put it: “I just don’t believe that their (ANZ’s) service will be so significantly different to the other banks.”
Are either campaigns original?
Computer says no…
Hmm… implying a “customer service promise”? Entertaining yes, unique or believable message no.
I think the difference is that ‘Barbara’ captures the indifference that many Australians feel banks/bank employees have.
I’d be interested to know how banks are perceived in the UK.
I’m with “computer says no”…
One big difference is that the Nationwide ads target specific issues that hit customers’ pockets. I imagine that would provide a pretty compelling argument to those particular customers. The ANZ ads are more general, and just reinforce the “all banks are bastards” message, which by the way includes ANZ.
i think this ad is great fun. i dont know how any bank can make a convincing service promise via an ad. all people want from their bank right now is the lowest home loan rate, the lowest card rate and dont muck things up. You cant fit a service promose around these items, especially in an ad – so ANZ have gone for the comical appeal….dont blame them, much easier isn’t it!!
I agree with Tony, the ‘Barbara’ ads seem to resonate with me more than the UK ads did.
That said the ‘Barbara’ ads lack a bit of credibility towards the end where the customer enters the branch and has this astonished look on their face. Nobody believes that they could possibly be astonished in a positive way by walking into an ANZ branch. Most workplaces in Australia have at least one if not more people who are disgruntled customers of ANZ and have told other people about their experience. I think they have deliberately raised the bar of expectations in the eyes of the public a little higher than necessary and like other posters have said in the original article they now associate bad experiences with the ANZ with the ‘Barbara’ ads.
Also has anybody noticed that the signage for “A Bank” features some of the same colors as the signage for the Commonwealth Bank namely the black and yellow. Knowing that this is an ad campaign satirizing the customer service of the big four banks, do you think this could be more than a coincidence?
I agree with Jon Tanner…the ad’s reasonably entertaining but believable? No.
@Tony Richardson – in my experience people hate banks in the UK as much as they do here. The only exception being First Direct, who built an entire camppaign on real footage from happy customers and offered customers 100GBP if they left First Direct for another bank as way of compensating them for poor service.
Still, on the whole, most are hated, depsite no fees, no ATM charges and no overdraft fees
I worked for a sub division of Nationwide for several years. Nationwide had a great internal culture where everyone worked hard to put the customer first. Nationwide definitely lives up to its brand promise and also worked hard to lead the abolishment of ATM fees in the UK. I’m yet to see an Aussie bank truly lead the way for the people.
The Barbara campaign tries to blame customer dissatisfaction with banks on branch managers, which of course is an evil and wrong thing to do, because customers hardly ever meet their branch manager and most likely wouldn’t know who s/he is. Their problem is mostly with the corporate decision makers, the suits in Martin Place and Collins St who jack up interest rates and whack on fee after unnecessary fee with little in the way of oversight by government.
Just because it’s evil and wrong doesn’t mean it won’t work, though.