Love Me Do
It’s of great interest to us here at burningpants that Australia’s big four banks have decided that it’s not enough to provide services to Australians of all ages – but that they need to be loved by them too.
All of the big four (and by that we mean the two biggies – CBA and Westpac and the other two NAB and ANZ) are all competing for the idea of the nicest bank.
CBA are ‘determined to be different’. By that they mean nice to you, having a sotto voce idea that they will be providing five star service.
Westpac are competing for the idea of being trusted – if not explicitly, then through the idea that they are supporting people we really do want to trust like rescue helicopters.
ANZ ‘live in our world’ and NAB are focussing on more give, less take.
Add to this the millions of dollars that are being spent by industry funds on making sure that they are squeaky clean and the fact that credit unions and building societies have just added their voice to the mix to remind us that they have been here the whole time quietly being nice to people.
In economic terms what is at work here is the idea that these businesses – which for the past decade, at a guess, have been flat out competing for product, service and economic utility – are now competing for social utility. The idea that it’s not enough to be large and profitable, it’s important to be loved.
As far as we can tell, only one business is really doing something about it. NAB is rewriting the book on low cost and downright fee-free banking – betting on the idea that this will lead to inflows, account stickiness and for want of a better word, consumer love.
This is something of a last roll of the dice for the Lisa Gray-led NAB retail bank – there have been about five restructures and reshuffles in the past five years and the jury is somewhat out on the result of these latest efforts.
Through CoreData Labs, we have been measuring brand authenticity in Australia since March this year – that is, we have been tracking fortnightly what some 3,000 mass affluent Australians think of bank brands and the message is clear.
NAB’s authenticity has been declining steadily for the past three months; Westpac suffered a vicious fall but has since recovered and frankly the retail market doesn’t think a whole lot of Macquarie Bank.
But that’s just the concept of brand authenticity – what has been happening to NAB’s cash flows? The purest and simplest measure of this is the share of retail deposits.
This chart comes from the CoreData quarterly Cash Report, based on a survey of 1000 Australians.
The chart shows the proportion of people who closed cash accounts (savings/transaction or other) with one bank and opened a new, similar account elsewhere, split by gender.
It shows NAB is the fourth choice for Australians opening savings accounts and interestingly that females get the St George message and that males get the credit union, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank and Rabobank message.
Worse than this the data shows that NAB, given that their accounts are fee free, literally can’t give their business away.
As we said before the jury is still out on the new “love me” strategy but frankly the early signs ain’t good.
BrooksieG says:
Ah… remember the 80s when, I think, Saatchi and Saatchi floated the idea of brands being ‘Lovemarks’. The concept still kicks along, with S&S still following the faith. What is the world’s leading ‘lovemark’ at the moment? Bollywood actor, Shah Rukh Khan, is No. 1. Take a look http://www.lovemarks.com, you’ll be surprised at who/what has been voted the most loved brands. ‘John Denver’ at No. 20, ahead of ‘Australia’ at 24 takes some getting used to!