Tis the season to discuss a very, very non-controversial subject.

First let's set the right mood. Pour yourself a glass of Sacramental wine. Cut yourself some freshly baked bread. Light some incense. And turn up the soothing sounds of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Right, let's begin.

As a committed atheist, I'm rather agnostic about this new, upcoming outdoor campaign from the Centre For Inquiry in Canada.

Don't get me wrong. I totally agree with the sentiment. And kudos to any and all atheist groups for having the courage to stand up on behalf of reality.

I just wonder if this is the most effective way to spread the word. Something tells me that reducing a conviction shared by billions of people around the world to that of a "kooky" belief isn't exactly a conversation starter.

(Allow me to digress, as well as nitpick for just a second. I do wish the creators of the ad were a little more imaginative and used kookier examples of extraordinary claims like say the Birthers. Or the ongoing love affair between Ernie and Bert. Or the notion that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president.)

But back to the issue at hand. Why give the "war on religion" fanatics more ammunition with which to spew their whiny posturing.

No doubt proof and existence gets to the heart of what atheism is all about. Check out www.godisimaginary.com a website that started a few years ago and is dedicated to debunking the existence of god.

And yes I'm fully aware that www.godpoop.com would have been a better name, but they weren't prepared to pay the million dollars.

However it seems to me there is a more pointed way to get at the heart of the matter. Rather than attack the actual existence of god, how about de-legitimize the reasons that "compel" people to believe in the first place.

For instance, if you listen to the believers then apparently without god to guide or strike fear in us we'd all be a bunch of immoral savages killing and whoring and thieving and stabbing one other in the back.

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Tale of the promos.

MSNBC and Fox News have new promos out and both have more in common than you might think.

First off they are both directional based, perhaps a nod to the Foursquare generation.

And secondly their new slogans are starkly different from where they had previously been - MSNBC was "The place for politics" and Fox News, of course, were "Fair and Balanced".

That said while MSNBC clearly has staked out what they hope is a new long-term positioning with "Lean Forward", Fox News' "Move Forward" feels more tactical, like it was cut to counter what their rivals (albeit distant) are doing.

Here's the full breakdown:

MSNBC: Lean Forward

Inherent contradiction: MSNBC doesn't lean. Its philosophy decidedly veers sharply in one direction. 

Direction: Left. 

Tone: Artful, thoughtful, exploratory, hopeful, boring. 

Character it would play in the new Geico commercial featuring a sensitive, namby pamby patient and a tough-assed drill sergeant therapist: Namby pamby patient.

Type of vehicle it would be: Hybrid station wagon.

FOX NEWS: Move Forward

Inherent contradiction: Moving forward is what progressives do. Fox News is decidedly anti-progressive. Their philosophy looks back to an earlier, less complex and more conservative era.

Direction: Back to the pre civil rights era, most probably the fifties. 

Tone: Crude, bombastic, boastful, unapologetic, confrontational.

Character it would play in the new Geico commercial featuring a sensitive, namby pamby patient and a tough-assed drill sergeant therapist: Tough-assed drill sergeant therapist.

Type of vehicle it would be: Chevy truck (Made abroad)

I'm with Rush Limbaugh.

No I don't believe Barack Obama is a foreign born moslem nazi socialist marxist terrorist sympathizing son of a luo tribesman. But I do share Rush's antipathy towards this Nissan Leaf ad that has most of the ad community melting faster than an Icelandic glacier.



Mind you my reasons for despising this commercial are entirely different from Blimpbaugh's. Whereas he predictably finds this to be typical propaganda for the environmental movement, I find it unnecessarily self-serving and disingenuous.

How else do you describe an ad in which a dying species finds the love and time to hug a car owner for being environmentally empathetic. Please, enough with the "environment loves the car" bullshit. It wasn't that convincing the first time.

And how about someone follow this up with a public service spot where a rape victim tracks down, confronts and hugs her attacker following his castration. Didn't think so.

The polar bear, ladies and gentlemen, is going to die out. At some point in the near future they will exist in archived documentaries and no where else. And not a billion Nissan Leafs are going to reverse that. But gee thanks for being egomaniacal enough to think you can.

And the heartbreaking irony, of course, is that cars have no doubt played their part in its demise. If I was the creative director at TBWA/Chait Day I would have fired the creatives who came up with this on the grounds that they have no humanity.

Either that or made them change the ending. To something more palatable like the Polar Bear eats the driver. Yes, that would work. And a line that says something like, "Justifiably not every one is impressed."

Minus kudos to Tuberculosis Wankers/Chiat Day.

That starving child in Rwanda is now dead, but his next of kin are thrilled you won a gold lion.

I was talking with a creative director friend who shall remain nameless at an industry party the other day when a young creative bumbled up to him and said, "Great child abuse".

Now to be sure this creative director has been the subject of much speculation in ad circles regarding "deviant" activities in the past, but going all Catholic priest on us. I was shocked. Shocked I tell you. And appalled.

Of course I would instantly realize the young creative was in fact talking about an anti child abuse advertising campaign that my friend created which earned him a slue of awards. But the really disheartening thing was that he was praised for winning a ton of awards, not for effectively opening our eyes to an important issue.

Another friend, not content to have people come up to him to figuratively suck his dick shared his big Cannes win on Facebook. He even shared links to the pr buzz surrounding his win. No links to get more information about the cause though, rather his profit from it. It was the first major award he had ever won, so naturally he was cockahoop. The last I heard he got a better job at a better agency.

This has got me thinking about Public Service Advertising and how it appears to have become a profit motive, first and foremost for the creatives and agencies behind them. Especially now in the age of social media when pr has become the tool by which the agency and the creative can instantly and pervasively make a name for themselves. A little ironic too, since social media has also made it possible for more altruistic initiatives to become reality.

Recently the Cannnes Advertising Festival created a new category, the "Grand Prix for Good". Essentially this is an award for the best public service idea of the year and in large part it's a nod to this new era of doing good. Personally, in the interest of balance, I'd also like to see a "Grand Prix for Sin", a reward for creatively facilitating those habits that are now deemed socially unacceptable, i.e. tobacco advertising. But I digress.

The problem with the "Grand Prix for Good" is that it just ramps up the profit motive ten-fold. It's crack, heroin, pcp and weed all rolled into one.

But imagine if no credit was given to either the agency or creatives involved in the winning idea. Imagine if there wasn't even a piece of metal to hand out. Imagine all the people living life in peace.....sorry, I got carried away.

Seriously tough, how wonderful would it have been if the Cannes organizers had let the winning idea literally stand for nothing but the selfless act of doing good.

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Ad critique of the now.

A lot of people have taken offense to this recent outdoor ad by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. And why not.

I mean it was created with a total disregard for the hallowed craft of art direction and copywriting. I've seen anal wart removal ads on the subway which exhibit more refinement and subtlety. All creatives should be horrified and demand a complete revision.

Here are a few of tips:

• Remove the crescent and star. Right now it looks like a building with a skewed one-eyed happy face. It had me smiling for a second until I realized the aim was to horrify/scare/anger.
• Lose the double arrow. Not sure what it means other than "neither here nor there". Rather have the arrow lead from left to right, which symbolizes "then and now".
• "Why There?" Really, is that the best way of capturing attention. How about something more New York, like "Are you fucking kidding me?"
• The color scheme is all over the place. If this message is to be direct and coherent, then so should the art direction. Also the colors need to be more threatening. I'm not getting Armageddon from this. Red could be particularly effective. Stay away from pink though.
• Make your logo bigger. Proudly own the ad.

(Sharing credit to adfreak)

Not so fast Old Spice guy.

It's arguably the blockbuster of the early summer, the runaway viral hit that is Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign.

The litany of success is impressive. A film Grand Prix at Cannes. Mass hysteria on the ad blogosphere following its "184 personal response videos" initiative. And a recent appearance by its telegenic protagonist Isaiah Mustafa on "The Ellen Degeneres Show".

It even prompted a typically astute musing from uber commentator Andrew Sullivan that the Old Spice guy is in fact the second charming black man with a Muslim name to have successfully wooed America of late. Indeed so.

But hold on. Has he really? This is where I step in as the party pooper, reluctantly mind you, and do a number 2 all over Old Spice. For just as President Obama popularity is plummeting in the polls, so Old Spice's sales have been heading south.

According to marketing information service gurus WARC, the campaign for Old Spice Red Zone After Dark body wash, with its twelve million plus views on YouTube alone, has actually coincided with a drop of 7% in sales. Now I'm no financial expert, but that sure looks like a real negative return on investment.

This wouldn't be the first time a highly creative, award-winning campaign failed to move product, of course. In some circles it's actually a badge of honor. And no doubt there's a good reason for it. Writer Lindsay Robertson has a particularly interesting take.

My own personal view is that everyone was on Facebook watching and sharing the ads rather than going out and buying the product. Still it does raise an interesting dilemma for a brand in today's multi-media marketplace. Can virtual success be considered a real return on investment even if it does nothing for the bottom line?


(Sharing credit to Yahoo! and warc.com)

Adidas having the last laugh?

That spectacular three minute "Write the future" Nike commercial can now be confined to the ash heap of history. Okay it will come back strongly during next year's advertising award circuit, but today Cristiano Ronaldo, its last surviving protagonist, meekly went the way of the others. Their future has been wrote.

The heroes in Adidas's vastly inferior campaign, on the other hand, are flying high. David Villa, aka "The Blaze" is the joint top scorer, while "The Spark", better known as Lionel Messi is arguably the player of the tournament so far. They go head to head in one of the commercials and will probably do the same for real in the semi-finals.

All is not lost for Nike though. A new spot in the campaign featuring Robinho has just started airing. And while he hasn't exactly set the World Cup alight, his Brazil are ominously starting to look like the last team that will be left standing.

World Cup schill of the now.

Yahoo sports writer Martin Rogers speculates the financial worth of Landon Donavon's injury time goal against Algeria. “It only took a couple of seconds, but it changed Donovan’s life forever,” he quotes a sports economist. He might as well be quoting from Nike's "Write the future" campaign.

Indeed, one has to wonder if Martin hasn't been sponsored by Nike to provide the editorial content part of their campaign. Maybe not, but his post does leave a putrid after taste if you're a big believer in the purity of sports. To breakdown a classically thrilling World Cup moment into its financial implication seems incredibly cynical coming from a so-called sports writer.

Perhaps Mr. Rogers will be shocked to learn that the joyous eruption of celebration from American fans from Bloemfontein to Boston when Donavon scored had absolutely nothing to do with the potential millions that may come his way.

No doubt as we speak he's calculating the millions of euros in revenue lost by the members of the French and Italian soccer teams.

Stupid gets the Grand Prix.

In light of Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign getting the Grand Prix nod in the outdoor category at Cannes, I thought it prudent to revisit the campaign.

I'm actually pleased it won, a feeling I would never have imagined experiencing when it first appeared months ago. Back then I thought it was an inane, frivolous piece of work open to the obvious charge, "Of course you have to be stupid to pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of jeans!"

So why the change of heart? What I've come to realize in the time since the campaign debuted is that the folks at Anomaly/NY and Diesel were far-sighted to enough to see that "stupid" has cultural resonance like never before. And so they cheekily made a virtue out of it.

For starters, they understood that stupid is the antidote to smart. And smarty hasn't been doing too well lately. Take the two major crisis of the last couple of years, the financial meltdown and the oil spill in the gulf.

The financial crisis in large part was a direct result of smart people getting way ahead of the game. Left to their own devices they conceived complex products that only a few could understand. In other words, smart unregulated leads to very bad things.

Conversely, the mess in the gulf, so far, hasn't been solved despite the smartest minds working on it. It's become so desperate that advertising agencies and actors are grasping for straws. Smart can't solve everything.

And it doesn't stop there. Cars may be smart but most still have negative impacts on the environment. Phones may be smarter, but they haven't made our lives easier. Rather they deluge us with excess information that distracts and interrupts. Bombs may be smarter but we're no closer to finding a smarter peace.

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The education gap.

Ask any number of political scientists, social critics or public policy wonks and they'll tell you that primary and secondary education is one of the most serious long-term problems facing the United States today. Failing teachers, overcrowded schools, high-school graduates who can barely read and write, the growing gap in test scores between rich and poor, black and white, right wing nuts from Texas re-writing text books, I could go on.

Mind you wouldn't know it judging by kids in commercials these days. Indeed the educated gap between real kids and "commercial" kids couldn't be any wider.

Take the new campaign for Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese. It stars remarkably articulate seven and eight year old kids, who with impressive oratorical zeal accuse their parents of stealing their macaroni and cheese.

Indeed they make their cases against their parents with a prosecutorial precision not seen since the early days of Jack Mccoy. "Send me down the river on trumped up charges", complains one kid. Just where did these kids learn to apply such nuanced reasoning.

Actually this gift of the gab from ad infants starts even lower than seven. That E-trade baby sure knows who to engage in witty repartee. I even used a couple of the his lines to get laid recently. I'd like to see a baby from Jon and Kate's litter speak with such clear diction and fluency. Didn't think so.

We may lag well behind other industrialized nations when it comes to primary and secondary education. Recent studies suggest American kids rank about 12 out of 38 nations in reading. But at least our "commercial" kids are kicking ass.

Time to shit on an ad campaign.

Perhaps it's because I don't care much for"Flight of the Conchords", but I'm not amazed by Hewlett Packard's new television brand campaign starring Rhys Darby, who plays the band manager from said show.

Yes it's cute, mildly informative and does technology in a simple, non threatening way. But maybe that's the problem. It's too simple. Somehow HP doesn't come across as a cutting edge giant of Silicon Valley like Apple or Google or Intel.

So what's the problem? Let's begin with the spokesman. Rhys Darby makes former HP CEO and laughing-stock senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina look like a sage. He comes off as an annoying, poor imitation of David Letterman playing an ignorant goofball. The shtick gets tired very quickly and quite frankly undermines the supposedly amazing revelations.

Then of course there's the odd celebrity thrown in. And I do mean odd. Anne Liebovitz seems a particularly strange choice, given her current financial woes. Unless HP can offer brilliant financial advice, I'm not sure how they can really make her life better. Dr. Dre may be achingly cool to some, but this is the man who pitches Dr. Pepper on the side. Need I say more.

Thirdly, comparative brand campaigns. Like HP, Intel has a quirky and personable campaign that also does technology in a non threatening way. They, however, got the balance just right between irreverence and smartly advocating their brilliance. You can't beat mail delivery robots. As a result Intel feels like the brand that's doing something amazing.

IBM's "Smart Planet" campaign, like HP, strives to offer real solutions through better technology. For IBM though, the solutions are big, like helping world class cities fight crime more effectively, as opposed to being able to execute a print command from your cell phone. In bringing the world together rather than random individuals like a photographer or a musical artist/producer, IBM technology again seems to be doing something far more amazing.

Sorry HP. Better try next time. And that said I'd still love to work at 72andSunny.

Here's to diminished returns.

I've been seeing a lot of a semi-new Heineken spot lately, where a young man engages in an ill-conceived maneuver and buys a Heineken for the lovely daughter of his frightening boss. Not bad, but nothing special.

And then it hit me. This ad nicely contrasts with a Guinness commercial that aired few months back. So I thought it could be a useful exercise to revisit said Guinness spot for a little cultural criticism. Bear with me though, this might smell a bit.

Just to refresh, in the Guinness spot, a glass of the black nectar makes its way across the city to a young man who has just asked for a raise for himself and his team despite being on the job for less than a week. In New York we call that chutzpah. Guinness called it being bold, probably the safer line if you want to reach a broader demographic.

Both ads are a toast to today's confident bright young things in the marketplace. In both ads we see intrepid individuals take a risk and assert themselves. But that's where the similarity ends.

The assertiveness of the young man in the Heineken ad is rather mild. Which consequently makes his triumph equally small. So he buys his boss's daughter a drink behind the ogre's back, whoopdedoo. Not exactly masters of the universe stuff.

Our hero in the Guinness spot, on the other hand, not only took a whopper of a risk in making his play, he doubled down. A raise not only for himself, but his entire team. Did this guy have balls or what. If he was in the Heineken ad he wouldn't have gone after the boss's daughter. He would have gone after the boss's job.

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Leaking privacy.

I'm not sure if the creators of this campaign were fully aware of what they were playing with, but I think they've brilliantly stepped into the privacy debate for their own gain.

Bear with me. We're living in a heady time when loads of our personal data like financial and medical information are being collected, stored, shared and used by third party entities.

As a result more of our privacy is open to being compromised, especially online. Recently Google came under criticism for privacy flaws in one of its new social products called Buzz.

But the breach isn't just happening online. Many concerns have been raised regarding the once impregnable "secrecy'" policies of foreign banks.

Then there's the ongoing debate about the validity of wire-tapping by government agencies. Just how much legal cover should the government expect when monitoring individuals or organizations it has suspicions about.

Even the census is seen by some, and I'm talking about you Michele Bachmann, as a government tactic to extract too much information about you.... and then you end up in an internment camp. Okay, I don't really get that one, either.

Paranoia is heavy in the air, maybe not as thick as the ash currently spewing out of an Icelandic volcano, but still as pervasive and potentially as debilitating. How much do we really want the outside world to know about us? Not much I would suppose.

At least the fear of having one's incontinence exposed can be laid to rest.

Damn kids.

Is it just me or is there a noticeable plethora of advertising lately that either employs kids or the idea of being a kid. It could very well be my lack of "empathy" for children that makes me extra sensitive to such developments, but I think I'm onto something.

And I'm not talking about advertising for brands where you would expect to see kids like cereal or jello or Lipitor. Okay, maybe not Lipitor, just checking to see if you are still with me.

Rather I'm referring to complex, grown-up brands in high-tech communications, financial services and the energy industry.

This all dawned on me while watching the anthem spot for a new AT&T brand campaign, which tries to equate the magical possibilities of today's wireless age with the wonder of being a five year old kid again.

Before long I was thinking about those "abused kids" in the Ally Bank commercials, E-Trade's "talking babies" and Exxon Mobile's "young tinkerer's" campaign which promotes the problem solvers of tomorrow. I could go on.

Conventional wisdom could explain it this way. The demographic for most of these brands are people with relatively young families. So kids would be the obvious way to pull them in. This is the group, after all, who congest Facebook with pictures of their kids or their relative's kids so why not rope them in emotionally with a juvenile pitch.

Then there's the need to inject simplicity and clarity into an increasingly less easy to understand world. Politicians do this all the time. They constantly try to reduce complex issues to simplistic soundbites. Just the other day Sarah Palin explained away international relations as fighting in a school-yard. See, bringing it back to kids.

And advertisers love to dumb down too. There's nothing child's play about communications technology, financial services or energy. And yet by employing kids the message can be broken down to one of absolute simplicity. If babies get investing on E-Trade then what's your problem.

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Repackage of the now.

I for one think simplicity can be over-rated when it comes to advertising. This is especially true for print advertising. Case in point this new campaign for FedEx.

At first glance, what an eye-catchingly simple way to express global reach. The ad blogs certainly dig. The creatives are booking their flights to Cannes as we speak.

But on second thought this campaign should merit an "and?". For unless you've been living in a cave or Sarah Palin's brain you should know by now that FedEx does global. Has been for all these years. So how exactly does this idea advance the FedEx story?

Clearly to the people behind it, including FedEx it's not so much a case of saying something new, but rather saying the same thing in a new way. Which can only mean one thing. FedEx has nothing new to say. A bit like an aging sports star who pathetically clings on to his one claim to glory from yesteryear.

That said, it is charmingly simple. So half a kudos to DDB, Brazil. And here's the full campaign.

The trouble with marketing.

Here's a doozy. According to findings in a recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications men with beards are deemed more credible than those who are clean-shaven when it comes to endorsing products like cell phones and toothpaste. Probably not shavers though. Or is there not a contradiction in having a man with a beard sell a product that promises to eliminate said beard? But I digress.

According to the researchers these implications could extend beyond advertising and into the realm politics. Say the researchers, "the presence of a beard on the face of candidates could boost their charisma, reliability, and above all their expertise as perceived by voters, with positive effects on voting intention."

Okay. I've got three words for the researchers. Osama. Bin. Laden.


(Sharing credit to psfk)

The new puppet masters.

Do you know what behavioral placement is? Well the Wall Street Journal does. Basically, it's a purer form of product placement, except instead of embedding brands into programming and broadcasts, the idea is to push a type of behavior that you want viewers to adopt.

According to the WSJ, the folks at NBC Universal have been engaged in this practice since 2007 when they have been subtly promoting eco-friendly messaging into the story lines of their daytime and prime time shows.

For instance, Dwight Schrute became a cape-wearing superhero obsessed with recycling in “The Office”and Al Gore made a guest appearance on “30 Rock”. And let's be honest he wasn't there for his good looks and humor.

This kind of placement won't just be for the environment. In June this year, NBC Universal plans a week in which programming will emphasize healthy eating and exercise. Presumably this means there will be no donuts or hot dogs on any "Law and Order" episodes. The prime-time comedies will have to feature situations built around cardiovascular exercises. And the public service announcement, "The more you know" will become "The less you eat, fatso" for the week. Stay tuned.

Quite frankly there's nothing wrong with this. I mean if viewers are influenced in a positive way by watching their favorite characters perform well-meaning, socially enhancing actions then good for NBC.

But it has got me thinking. That's a lot of power in the hands of the head of programming at NBC Universal or any other network that engages in similar practices. I mean these guys and gals can pretty much push their own pet socially aware issues into the public's consciousness through the scripts of their top shows.

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Something rotten in the state of Tigerland.

I suppose I could have said something about Nike's latest "controversial" ad featuring Tiger Woods earlier, but I was following events in the real world, like Kyrgyzstan.

There's a been coup people and another dictator may be drawing unemployment checks pretty soon. Cheer if you like free, democratic republics. Boo if you like repressive, tin pot dictatorships.

So now that there's a lull in the action and before Russia presumably invades the central Asian republic let me share a few thoughts.

First off kudos to Nike for a buzz job well done. Judging by the reaction from the advertising industry, the mainstream media as well as the world of sports they certainly got way more bang for their buck than they could ever have planned. Yes I know, Tiger did too.

But why is everyone getting their knickers in a twist over this? Although I should point out that I did like what Barbara Lippert had to say on morning tv. Especially loved her line about Tiger being "too big to fail" as far as Nike is concerned. Apparently a few of the floozies he was poking on the side felt the same way if you believe the stories in TMZ.

Here's the thing. If this is what passes for controversy these days then what a bunch of prudish pansies we are. Now if the Vatican cut a commercial in which they defended their child-molesting priests on the grounds they never tampered with baby animals then that would be controversial. Actually Nike could probably have made the same claim about Tiger too.

And don't for one minute think that Nike didn't anticipate all those parodies out there. Here's my favorite. I bet it's how they conceived the social media portion of the campaign. Hell, they probably cut most of them. I would have.

As for the commercial itself, this is what came to mind while watching it. Tortured son hears words from his dead father. Sounds familiar right. But Hamlet it ain't. Hamlet's problem was that he was paralyzed by inertia. Tiger's problem is that he could have done with some.

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More on bank advertising reform.

Okay, now I'm really cooking. Here are a few more mock-up examples of print ads I would run. Again, excuse the complete disregard for art direction.

Former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas is considered one of the chief architects of banking deregulation that began in the late nineties. For example, it was his legislation that repealed Glasse-Steagall in 1999, the financial equivalent of opening Pandora's box. I thought a provocative ad pointing to this fact would make for an effective ad.

And here are a couple more ads that allow the bank to take a bold stand against derivatives trading.

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.

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