the wreckage of the mortgage business and play up its strengths in
customer service, WaMu has launched a national ad campaign,
jettisoning its long-running campaign featuring stereotypical
fat-cat bankers in favour of a euphoric message, writes Charles
Davis.
Washington Mutual (WaMu), the largest US savings-and-loans
institution (thrift), has kicked off a national ad campaign and
introduced a new tag line – ‘Whoo hoo!’ – designed to reflect
moments of “a dream-like state where customers visualise moments of
personal elation in response to learning about WaMu products and
services,” according to a WaMu statement. Reinforcing that message
are such advertising tag lines as ‘We don’t nickel and dime
you’.
Shane Winn, vice-president and national public relations manager
for WaMu, told RBI the campaign was an attempt to capture
what it is like to bank with WaMu. He said that the campaign – a
comprehensive, cross-channel promotional campaign on TV, print,
radio and online – was designed to tap into how WaMu customers feel
about the brand.
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“It’s as much about simplicity as anything else,” Winn said. “The
language we use to speak with customers – free cheques for life, we
don’t nickel and dime you, and we have your back, are all designed
simply, and should convey the simplicity we bring to
banking.”
Winn said that the Whoo hoo! campaign is also aimed at highlighting
WaMu’s near-national branch network, and at underscoring the
novelty and freshness of the Occasio branch design. “The TV ads are
all in the context of a branch, highlighting branch-delivered
products,” Winn said. “It’s perfectly aligned with our growth
strategy of delivering more and more of our products through the
retail branch network, as we build out nationally.”
The branch as a dead letter
WaMu had the good fortune not to embrace the internet fever of the
1990s, when many banks saw the branch as a dead letter. Instead,
WaMu viewed the online channel as complementary to the branch
network, a customer service tool rather than the inevitable future
of banking. As other banks were sinking millions into online
channels, WaMu was developing Occasio. “We saw online as a
complementary thing, but customer service is our distinguishing
variable, so we wanted to really bring that home,” he said. “There
is usually a moment when the customer really needs the branch, and
we also have a story to tell in our branches, with the Occasio
concept. There are no velvet rope lines, no thick glass, and so we
have really worked to show people that model in our ads.”
The campaign is the first product of WaMu’s alliance with
TBWAChiatDay, the ad agency behind Apple’s eye-catching iPod
advertising. The bigger story, though, is that WaMu has
unceremoniously retired the pin-stripe-suited ‘fat cats’ ad
campaign supposed to represent those villainous competitors doing
that nickel-and-diming. Winn said the stereotypical bankers
initiative served WaMu well, but the fat cat campaign was really
aimed at a single product – the bank’s new free checking product –
while the Whoo hoo! campaign is company-wide.
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By GlobalDataThe result is a more forward-looking, optimistic approach, one that
emphasises “who we are” rather than “who we’re not,” Winn said.
Equally important, he added, is TBWAChiatDay’s emphasis on what the
agency has described as “invertising” – bringing the ad’s values to
life internally with the employee base. Winn said that WaMu feels
that this “invertising component is as important as the external
message… To be able to invigorate the salesforce, and feel the
campaign in-house, is huge for us, because in service industries,
the actualisation of the campaign in the branch is how it really
gets done.”
In the campaign’s TV spots, customers shout “Whoo hoo!” over WaMu’s
efforts to simplify banking such as offering free identification
theft protection and free ATM withdrawals with its checking
accounts. One spot features a bald man who shouts “Whoo hoo!” as he
learns about WaMu’s free checking services and then dreams he is
driving along an oceanfront in a new car and with a full head of
hair.
In each commercial, a teller’s revelations about a bank product
spark what WaMu calls a “whoo-hoo moment” – a joyful dream-sequence
evocation of what it feels like to be a WaMu customer. In one
creative, Dance, the big moment is an homage to the popular TV
reality show ‘Dancing With the Stars’. The ads clearly are designed
to refresh WaMu’s brand image, and change the subject from the
uncertainties of the mortgage market to the joys of free
checking.
That’s a ticklish challenge for WaMu, which posted a fourth-quarter
loss thanks to substantial mortgage-related writedowns, and
forecasts a loan-loss provision of as much as $2 billion for the
quarter alone. Kerry Killinger, WaMu’s chairman and CEO, has staked
the bank’s turnaround on its impressive retail branch network,
which it plans to expand in densely populated markets. WaMu plans
to build 100 to 150 retail branches primarily in California, Texas,
Florida, New York and in the north-west and to add more than 1
million checking accounts this year.
As it continues to broaden its branch presence, Winn said, the
message must reflect a much larger bank while not losing the
simplicity that made it famous in the first place. “We want to
become an iconic brand.”
