Way back in August of 2007 I wrote a blog on WAMU, aka Washington Mutual. I award them the worst branding and advertising award.?
?
The saga continues??The latest commercial features a woman asking if WAMU provides free checking for her bakery business. They then go through a poorly acted script to the payoff??WAMU gives free checking to businesses.?Split to the woman making a snow angel on top of a white cake (I think I want to throw up).??
Wow, revolutionary huh? I?ve been getting free business checking for about 5 years now from Citizens Bank. Don?t recall running out of the bank to make a snow angel though.?
?Then they finish with what appears to be a trademarked word;?Whoo Hoo???
?We want to become an iconic brand that people love,? said WaMu CMO Genevieve Smith, in a statement. ?Through ongoing brand tacking, we know we always outperform our peers when it comes to being emotionally relevant to people. [The new campaign] gives us a unique opportunity to talk about who we are.??
Let?s start with Genevieve?s own words. [The new campaign] gives us a unique opportunity to talk about who we are.? ?
Branding isn?t about you Genevieve, it?s about them. And that?s where you are 100% wrong with this campaign. First it?s unrealistic to think that a customer would go running out of a bank yelling Whoo Hoo because they just got free checking. What a horrible interpretation of making things simple for the client.
Its new ?Whoo hoo!? campaign, per TBWA/Chiat/Day,
Los Angeles, seeks to convey the positive emotional appeal of banking with Washington Mutual.
?
?The campaign creative taps into that [?Whoo hoo!?] experience and the enthusiasm of WaMu?s employees,? said Rob Schwartz, executive creative director for TBWA/Chiat/Day, in a statement.?
Here?s where the ad agency goes wrong (and this is because ad agencies aren?t true branding companies): ?
Ah, giving someone free checking doesn?t tap into the customer?s emotional appeal. It in fact does nothing at all and delivers on nothing at all. ?
I?ll bet you my weeks pay that if we surveyed 100 Washington Mutual employee?s that they themselves wouldn?t be very happy with their employer WAMU. And they certainly wouldn?t be yelling Whoo Hoo. ?
Just because you want it to be doesn?t mean it?s gonna be. ?
The new campaign brings WaMu’s brand values to life: A company that lives to simplify banking and do it with a smile.?
So the brand identity is making things easy. Okay, I get that and I?m down with it. How does this ridiculous Whoo Hoo campaign deliver on it? Wanna know a company that?s delivered on making things easy for their customers??
Staples, the Easy Button. ?
You guys have just created an unrealistic campaign that is goofy and will be forgotten by the time you switch ad agencies.?
For spending 100 million on advertising you sure do a poor job.WAMU, why haven?t you fired your CMO?
![[Slashdot]](http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico)
![[Digg]](http://digg.com/favicon.ico)
![[Reddit]](http://reddit.com/favicon.ico)
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif)
![[Facebook]](http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
![[Technorati]](http://technorati.com/favicon.ico)
![[Google]](http://www.google.com/favicon.ico)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.stumbleupon.com/favicon.ico)
This entry was posted
on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Branding Blunders, The Brand Crap List.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:44 am
[...] Mutual aka WAMU?are done 80%, Whoo Hoo or should I say Oh NO! If you remember I wrote about them here and here on their PATHETIC attempt at branding. Their Whoo Hoo campaign is useless and serves no [...]