Hole in the wall gang rides again

Withdrawing funds from a Barclays cash machine today I noted that the UK banking group has added a trademark to its ‘hole in the wall’ branding.

Barclays Bank first dispensed with the ATM acronym for its cash machine stock in 2006, preferring to re-label the machines with the more colloquial phrase ‘hole in the wall’. The initiative was dreamt up by Deanna Oppenheimer, who had recently been installed as Barclay’s new chief operating officer from Washington Mutual.

Oppenheimer’s attempt to get down with the people seemed a little misguided. ‘Hole in the wall’ was a term used only by the newspaper trade to spice up headline stories about cash machine theft, playing on the original Wild West hide-out used by bank robbers in the US. For the general population at large, the ATM was known simply as the cash machine.

Why any bank would dress up its ATMs using a term commonly associated in the minds of the general public with theft and general misappropriation of bank funds is beyond me. For the same bank to then compound its folly by trademarking the ‘hole in the wall’ catchphrase seems bizarre.