In brief: Meltdown marketing and branding challenges

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Banks increase direct marketing by 200%

Banks are fighting all the bad news they get these days any way they can, which means more direct mail. A lot more. Like double. According to Mintel Comperemedia, the country’s banks sent 53 million offers sent during the third quarter of 2008, nearly twice the number sent during the same period in 2007. That’s also reflects a 42% increase in Q3 over Q2.

The message has changed too. Gone are the loan offers and mortgage deals, replaced by deposit products…all deposits. Banks sent more than 300 times more savings-related direct mail pieces to current customers in the third quarter of the year than the second. Direct mail solicitations for checking accounts were up 90% during the same period.

Not my bank… Oh wait, maybe my bank is @#$% too

A few months ago, people’s pessimism about the financial industry was growing, but they still had faith in their own personal financial institution. But that last bastion of hope is disappearing more and more every day.

Despite the financial industry’s efforts to reassure anxious consumers, people’s confidence in their own personal banks fell 3% just in September alone. One can only imagine how much worse it’s gotten in the last 2-3 months.

The number of consumers who said they were “very confident” in the banking industry in general also fell 6% in September.

Morpace, the market research firm behind the study, says the erosion in confidence is directly related to the negative headlines on some of the country’s best-known banking institutions. Go figure.

CFO survey: Things generally suck in banking

A survey conducted by CFO magazine back in November reveals what top-level finance execs are thinking. And what they’re thinking isn’t pretty. Among the findings:

• Their relationships with their banks are strained
• 18% said that recent changes in their relationships
  with commercial lenders have placed their company’s
  long-term viability at risk
• TARP capital will do little to stimulate lending
• It costs more to borrow now
• Banks are less able to make lending decisions and commitments
• Banks are less flexible now
• The range of products and services available from their banks has narrowed
• One third of CFOs felt that commercial lending won’t reach
  some sense of normalcy until the fourth quarter of 2009…or later

Congressman irate over Citi’s $400 million for Mets field

Congressman Elijah Cummings says he’s livid that taxpayer dollars are going to Citi when the bank is blowing $400 million on naming rights for the Mets ballfield, soon to become Citi Field.

http://thefinancialbrand.com/2008/07/22/citi-bets-the-whole-ballgame/

“We got Citigroup coming to the Congress, begging for money to stay afloat. They’ve got $25 billion a few months ago and now they are getting another $20 billion and all kind of sweeteners to keep them afloat. At the same time they are saying they are going to let go some 52,000 employees, they are adamant about holding on the a deal whereby they can plaster their name on the front of a stadium in New York for $400 million over the course of the next 20 years. I have a problem with that. My constituents do too.”