I’m still a newspaper guy.  I look forward to reading my daily newspaper early each morning.  And I enjoy scanning the ads that appear in each issue.  It’s sort of a window into what’s happening in our economy. Lately I’ve noticed that most bank advertising consists of CD rate ads.  Gone are the credit ads pushing low rate mortgages, auto loans, and equity lines of credit.  Banks have realized that consumers are hunkering down and saving more and borrowing less . . . if at all.

I’m also a mail guy.  I enjoy receiving the day’s mail and sorting through it to see who’s trying to get me to buy what.  I have noticed that the once ubiquitous credit card offers are now as rare as a warm winter in Chicago . . . my former hometown.  I am receiving more offers to buy gold and free tickets to investment dinners at local restaurants.  But the one thing that I never receive, and it always puzzles me, are postcards from local banks promoting the rates on their CDs and other savings products.  It doesn’t make sense to me why banks would spend precious marketing dollars on expensive newspaper rate ads that arrive in a sea of competing ads when they could send me a simple CD rate postcard that arrives to compete with only 3-4 other pieces of mail.

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A couple of months ago a mega bank from the East coast invaded California as a result of acquiring a very large savings bank by the name of WaMu.  For years WaMu spent millions of dollars promoting free checking throughout California.  In fact, WaMu offered only two types of checking accounts — one being free checking.  WaMu free checking ads were ever present on bus signs, billboards, in the local Sacramento newspaper, and on the radio.  Mention free checking and everyone knew you were talking about WaMu.  Now that’s effective positioning and branding.

Unfortunately, the housing bust brought an untimely end to WaMu and its ubiquitous free checking marketing.  The bank’s new owner has blanketed Sacramento — and I assume the rest of the state — with a massive marketing campaign consisting of billboards, full-page newspaper ads, and a humorous radio spot that irritated me the first time I heard it.  In fact, the other day I encountered two billboards within a 100 yards of each other.

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