Just saw a new spot by Publicis for Citibank. God does it suck. Oh yes, it looks nice. The music is cool. The locations are stunning, the acting is fine. In fact, it's all so good you can use it for every credit card out there. It is completely devoid of any ownable essence. The most egregious non-ownability is the VO (there's nothing wrong with the voice) it just sounds exactly like Billy Crudup who does Mastercard and has for about 32 billions years.
In all the spot tells you that nothing whatsoever is unique about Citi cards. Except maybe that Citibank customers are so dumb on their father's 60th birthday they don't know if they are Norwegian or Swedish.
Here's my uber point. Saying you're cool is not a strategy.
Fallon once devised a campaign for citibank that made me a customer. it felt fresh and it was different form bank advertising. the ads where softly humorous, but always contained a benefit.
ReplyDeleteThen they switched agencies and became bland mundane almost over night. Reckon the new agency is easier to deal with. Listen better or something.
Everybody screams for creative advertising, but few stick to it.