Cringeworthy marketing gallery

A place to look at misguided and ill-informed attempts to be trendy and leap upon assorted passing bandwagons. Ideally this is done without necessarily understanding the true nature of the issues involved. Not just fintech stuff necessarily but anything labelled Web 2.0 is fair game.

Matt White North America editor at Finextra

f!?kberks

That was the verdict of comedian Al Murray, on Twitter, when Metro Bank made a song-and-dance to celebrate the opening of its 12th branch this weekend in Chiswick. 'I have actually crossed the road to avoid the toe curling god awful pisspoor balloon waving music blaring launch of my local Metro bank' said Murray on Friday before sharing a picture ...

21 May 2012 /retail

Retired Member 

My Image...My Blog...My Bank..No Way

Some stories are so jaw-droppingly weird that you just have to write about them...or at least I do. This story is one of those. So let me see if I can follow the logic that would make a bank turn down deposits based on a blog. Banks are in the business of making money and social networks are in the business of making the most out of getting peo...

26 February 2010 /security /regulation

Elton Cane Digital product delivery at News Corp Australia

Another ill-considered bank logo

ANZ have done a rebrand and ditched their blue stripy logo for a blue logo with three blobs. http://thefinancialbrand.com/2009/04/21/anz-new-logo/ Lazy journalists are reporting that the re-design cost A$15m. But this is actually the total of what the bank will spend on a new marketing campaign, updating signage etc. Seems fair enough. So it's not...

23 October 2009 /retail

Retired Member 

Apple forced to scrap iPhone advert

Apple have been told not to run a TV ad again in the UK for the iPhone 3G after 17 people complained that it exaggerated the speed of 3G. The ad used the phrase "really fast" repeatedly, coupled with shots of pages being loaded in fractions of a second. Apple maintained that the average viewer was a mobile phone user, would have understoo...

26 November 2008

Retired Member 

Fake Sumo wrestler helps HSBC shoot itself in the foot

HSBC stands accused of 'cultural insensitivity' after dressing up an overweight white man to look like a sumo wrestler and running it on ads across the UK. Complaints have come in that it looks like the man's skin tone has been darkened and his eyes have been made to look narrower - however the ad agency concerned claim it's just standard photograp...

26 August 2008 /retail

Retired Member 

Hey let's dumb it down for the yoof market

Have you seen www.urelife.com? I thought this was a Nathan Barley-style spoof at first. Surely a web site can't be this bad? Not even BBC3 looks this 'yoof'. What crack team of marketing geniuses thought this dumbed-down, quasi-text speak would appeal to the kidz? The kids may be young but I bet some of them can actually spell and the rest can s...

16 April 2008

Retired Member 

Brand madness - Apple versus Microsoft

The Mail app on the Mac comes with an RSS feed entitled Apple hot news which as you might expect is full of feel-good, brainwashing nonsense about all things Apple. Some of it's interesting - for example in a consumer survey by Changewave - 35 per cent of respondents who plan to buy a smartphone in the coming quarter already want to purchase an i...

03 April 2008

Retired Member 

Two word slogan - yours for 1.4 million quid

The Register are reporting that HMRC apparently got through an impressive £1.4m in 2006 coming up with a new slogan - HMRC Ambition. Yup that's only 700,000 per word. Bargain. While we're on the topic of daft rebranding - what on earth possessed the Beeb to do what it did to BBC3?

18 February 2008

Retired Member 

Eros card - that's a top idea

There was some discussion in the office about why it was called Eros. When we twigged the reason and that you can't after all use it in Ann Summers it seemed less interesting. Still I imagine early adopters out there can't wait to get a contactless pre-payment card just to buy a specific newspaper for slightly less than normal. I don't actually re...

21 September 2007

Matt White North America editor at Finextra

If this is the future I'll give it a miss

Barclaycard has gone all high tech with its marketing for the new OnePulse card and set up a Micro site called ‘The institute for future living’. A fictional character called Professor Danny shows you how much easier life can be if you use the magical contactless card. Danny explains OnePulse whilst a video of a woman who simply can’t manage to pa...

14 September 2007 /payments