Chasing a dream for NAB’s new small business ad
NAB’s new 30 second TV spot
A man who gave up his job to chase a dream of owning his own cafe is the focus of a new ad by the National Australia Bank.
The 30-second ad is the second TV commercial in the “Small business. We see you” campaign created by The Bridge.
A genuine question: are stories like the one about the coffee guy true? There are so many ads like this these days, that claims to be about real people; however, with the high production values and knowledge about what constitutes ‘reality-TV’ these days I have my doubts.
A recent survey by CCH revealed 7/10 SMEs trusted their own instincts ahead of advisors yet 8/10 accountants, the most trusted of advisors, said SMEs should trust their accountants over their own instincts. One of the reasons for this disconnect is that SMEs are sceptical about what advisors (like accountants & banks) say in their advertising eg ANZ’ said last week “we approve 7/10 loan applications for start ups”. All the banks would be doing themselves & their customers a service if there was greater transparency on genuine questions like 2cents. For all we know the people in NAB’s new ads could well be true situations.
What about a honest answer from NAB on this question?
Who cares whether these people are real or not? I think they probably are, but the bigger question is why do NAB and the rest of the banks think this dated 80’s approach of “we get you”, “we understand”, “we can help”, “we know your pain” still works?
Rather than paying lip service to caring about small business why not get off your butts and do something to help them? Have you seen AMEX Small Business Saturday? That’s been around for four years now. Have you not thought about doing something similar?
If it was a real business NAB would identify it by name and also there would be other media coverage – for example local TV/newspapers talking about how their local business is featuring in a big bank campaign.
For those familiar with cafes around Melbourne – that’s St Ali in South Melbourne.
That’s not the owner. The real owner is Salvatore Malatesta:
http://www.foodwinesleep.com.a.....testa.html
NAB just used the cafe as a ‘set’.
Particularly fond of St Ali asking NAB on twitter if they could send them a copy of the video, since they filmed it there, and they (coincidentally) bank with NAB. In typical banking customer service fashion, NAB didn’t help them out:
https://twitter.com/ST_ALi/status/325935213198835712
I seem to recall Microsoft getting in trouble a few years getting actors to pretend to be ‘real’ fans on Microsoft products having switched away from Macs. The takeaway was that they couldn’t find any people IRL who had switched from Macs to Windows!
Perhaps NAB can’t find any real small business customers of theirs who would be able to spruik their service without breaking out in laughter?