Why advertising for financial firms is so forgettable?

Its probably not fair - but its true - financial service companies make for very poor advertisements. No really, if there is one kid of advertising i really cant imagine doing, it's got to be this one. As a lay consumer most of the times i cant make out one advertisement for another - at a very basic level the ads do not seem to engage. (The only two exceptions to this are probably the State Bank of India banker to every indian campaign and the recent Union Bank 2010 campaign). Occasionally when banks do seem to hit upon something interesting - like ICICI bank, they dont seem to stick to it.

Maybe the big reason is that at their core - fin serv companies don't seem to think about branding - the approach seems to be more campaign specific or news specific rather than an effort to build a long term brand identity. This probably explains why there is no one thing you can remember a company by. for sometime i thought it could be the varied nature of their services under one roof - e.g. insurance to loan products which makes it tough for them to hold one essence - but then whats common between tata steel and tata tea, there is still a corporate brand.

These are but the symptoms, the core issue is a lack of clear positioning for the companies, this is where all campaigns and communications eventually flow from. There could be potentially many axis to differentiate starting with psycho graphic, the classic Mercedes approach, so also a philosophy that the company has towards financial products - like Nike has one which identifies the brand. Equally it maybe interesting to position along a key benefit that the consumer experiences when interacting with that company - for e.g the average indian has poor knowledge of finance - even basic banking, forget investments, so a positioning which delivers an answer to this fear, equally about prosperity which is the end result of prudent personal financial management - or of course many many more, best answered in consonance with the core strengths of the company.

And once the positioning is clear, building on it consistently without change - is what will carve it such that consumers can actually identify the company. After all positioning is what you do to the mind of the consumer.



By the way, the quote for today -
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost