A funny thing happened on the way to work this morning: I passed an ad, read it, and was suddenly struck by the fact that it felt totally incongruous to be seeing it during my morning commute. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was suddenly out of place in the Universe. And then....in dawned on me. I was seeing a Citibank ad on the streets of Boston, alerting me to the presence of their branches nearby.
Now, if you've ever spent any period of time living in New York, the ubiquitous Citibank ad on the side of a phone booth is part of the streetscape. They're so prevalent that they're easy to ignore. And yet, I became so accustomed to seeing them that at some point during my years in the city, they became a part of my spatial memory - a familiar reference point in a vast landscape.
So, what does this have to do with marketing? Well, beyond the fact that my ad recall would make any marketer gleeful, I can think of three good lessons:
1) Consistency breeds familiarity: It's the same campaign they've been running for years - if they'd messed with it, they would have lost the visual cues that caught my attention in the first place.
2) Campaign as brand equity: That simple campaign IS the brand, at least for this banker.
3) Context matters: They took something that was familiar to me in another place and time (and period of my life) and inserted it into a totally different context. Are there many former New Yorkers who had the same reaction? Dunno. But, it's a good reminder that - even with advertising - seeing the unexpected and the out-of-place can make us pay attention.
Klusk,
You make great points all around about this topic, especially when you wrote "seeing the unexpected and the out-of-place can make us pay attention." I am a staff writer at Deliver Magazine and we recently ran an article about some of the hip and innovative marketing strategies that a different bank (Chase)is using at airports, which I think you might find interesting. You can see the story at http://delivermagazine.com/the-magazine/2006/11/01/banks-get-smart/1/
And don't forget to read to the end, as it is sure to put a smile on your face.
Posted by: Suzette | April 11, 2007 at 02:41 PM