You’ve got to hand it to Nab for an impressive marketing campaign.
This morning when I got off the train in the Melbourne CBD I was handed a copy of a special CD of break-up songs that had been put together by Nab to support its impressive marketing campaign, which sets it apart from the other banks.
It started on Friday night with a supposedly errant Tweet on the Nab corporate Twitter account hinting at some sort of break-up.
The next day Sydney’s Daily Telegraph had a front-page story about Nab’s move to subsidise exit fees for customers transferring their home loans from Commonwealth Bank and Westpac.
Then we had Valentine’s Day (a co-incidence, according to Nab!) and today we’ve got full-page ads in major newspapers with Nab declaring it is “breaking up” from other banks.
The breadth of this marketing campaign – and the way it has combined different mediums and different forms of marketing – is frankly pretty impressive.
While many would say the big four banks are basically the same (similar products, loan rates, funding models) Nab has gone out on a limb in a bid to differentiate itself.
The big question is, is this a big step towards increased competition in the banking sector or a marketing push designed to win share?
Clearly Nab’s strategy of abolishing various fees is tapping into community anger at the big profits the banks made in recent years and should, over time at least, force the other banks to react.
Except that so far it hasn’t worked like this. Nab abolished exit fees on mortgages last year but Commonwealth Bank and Westpac have not followed suit. And as Nab points out today, its dumping of a range of other fees hasn’t led to market-wide fee cuts either.
It will be interesting to see how Nab’s rivals respond to its latest campaign. While we should expect to see more advertising action, the other banks may be happy to sit tight and see how customers react.
If they start to move towards Nab the other majors will need to react.
But if consumers continue to decide that switching banks is all a bit hard the others might be happy to let Nab spend millions on nice marketing campaigns and fee cuts.
Let’s see what message consumers send to the banks.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
