Bank advertising reform.

I've been seeing a lot of the Ally Bank campaign lately with the wannabe Steve Martin character being a right old meanie to a bunch of kids. And to be honest I'm not that impressed. Not that it's a bad campaign. On the contrary. It's a rather well-executed, simple idea. The problem is, it just feels so pre-2007.

Back then in those innocent days when snorkeling was something fun and wholesome you could do with the kids, the big gripe with banks was that they "nickel and dimed" you to death with all sorts of extra charges. Or that they treated you more like an account holder rather than a prized customer. Hence the selling strategies usually evolved into some derivation of, "We're for happy banking" or "'We make banking simple ".

Joy was certainly in the brief when I worked on the now defunct Washington Mutual's "Whoo hoo" campaign soon before it all turned into pooh pooh. Or should that be boo hoo. Similarly, when I worked on a bank pitch for Commerce Bank (now TD Bank, although strangely they've kept Regis and Kelly as their spokespeople) the message focused on convenience and simplicity.

Now, after the demise of thousands of banks and government bailouts worth over $700 billion (the actual cost may run into trillions), "no hidden fees" and "personal service that's more personal than their personal service" seem trivial and almost irrelevant selling points compared to the deeper causes for the public's growing lack of confidence and trust in the banking industry.

The problem now is, how do banks overcome the public's outrage at their involvement and culpability in the biggest financial mess since the depression of the 1930's, especially since most of them are opposed to any financial regulation and are indeed behind most of the lobbying that is trying to kill it.

So I started up the google, and discovered that over the last year there has been a fair amount of advertising that taps directly into the public's disgust at the big bank bailout. Most of this advertising tries to make a virtue of being a small bank as opposed to one of the those evil too big to fail types. And some of it is rather good.

Probably the best example is from the FirstBank of Colorado, which commissioned this sky banner that flew above Coors Field during the Colorado Rockies home opener. It's fun, ambient and no doubt gets people talking. But it's also a one-off. More tactic than strategic.

Elsewhere, from Virginia to Washington, small banks have gone after the big boys for starting the mess. Worthington National Bank of Fort Worth received $10 million in new deposits following this outdoor campaign.

Strategies like "Big banks bad, small banks good" and "We're as far away from Wall Street as you can get" are bang on point, but they're not radical. And maybe that's what a bank needs to be right now. And I'm not suggesting a bunch of leftist hippies from Berkley become bank managers and offer new customers free marijuana when they open a checking account (although it couldn't hurt). Or that banks enact a holiday to celebrate Karl Marx's birthday.

Rather, wouldn't it be great these kinds of small banks, through their advertising, became vigorous advocates for overhauling the system. Imagine a bank that publicly decried the kinds of structured derivative trading that reeked havoc on the financial world like some unforgiving god.

After all, it's all very well being against big-bank bailouts, but when you're a dispassionate abstainer in the struggle for financial regulation or worse still are actually lobbying behind the scenes against it, aren't you still part of the problem.

So what would I do, if I was running a bank account? Glad you asked. I would develop a strategy that made the bank a rallying point for banking reform. This would integrate traditional advertising (tv/print/outdoor) with a social media advocacy campaign that enables supporters to directly pressure their local elected representatives.

For instance, here are a couple of mock-up print ads for the fictitious "Bank" that I prepared earlier. Excuse the lame art direction and the absence of explanatory body copy. But notice, not a kid in sight.