“Honey could you pick up a quart of milk and a line of credit on your way home tonight?” That’s not as odd as it sounds, ever since PremiereGroup put a new twist on the banking industry’s trend toward closing traditional bricks-and-motor branches and opening scaled-down versions in supermarkets.
Before we could start, certain obvious truths stood in our way. People want more, not less, for their money. They resist change. And they rate the fun of doing their banking chores just slightly above making an appointment for gum surgery.
To make matters worse, people tend to tune out typical bank-like communications, lumping them together with one giant sustained yawn. On the other hand, the retail supermarket environment is filled with thousands of colorful competing messages and offers, all executed with the subtlety of a Scud missile.
We couldn’t beat ’em, so we joined ’em. We gave the PNC Bank’s alternative branches a new moniker, dubbing them “SuperBanking.” And the communications surrounding them became super as well, absolutely unbank-like in every respect possible.
We decided that it was best to take an honest, casual approach, doing away with all the stuffiness, double-talk, and percentage points that typically clutter communication in the banking category. Using humor to overcome negative perceptions and concerns brought a fresh and unique look and attitude.
Messages were created to assimilate the food store environment, including the value system, vernacular, retail tactics, and all the graphic tricks of the trade we could pull out of our hat. An irreverent, tongue-in-cheek creative tactic proved to be infinitely “campaignable,” from ads, posters, and point-of-purchase that outrageously created banking parallels with packaged goods claims to buttons, store aprons, and shelf-talkers tailored specifically for the department or section of the store in which they appeared.
The net result was that PNC Bank carved out a position as a breakthrough in banking service, reinforcing attributes of convenience, friendliness, and ease of interaction while achieving its objectives of maximizing value and driving sales and deposits.
We helped PNC SuperBanking give consumers what they were shopping for all along: “All the strength of their regular bank available in a handy and convenient economy size.”
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