That’s what NAB, one of Australia’s four biggest banks, did to its rivals Commonwealth, ANZ and Westpac. Using an elaborate mix of marketing media, NAB announced that it would be “breaking up” with its competitors.

The day after Valentine’s Day, NAB delivered an open letter to competitors that reads like a Dear John letter. NAB said it had “moved on” by abolishing fees, offering better interest rates, improving access to ATMs, and supporting local businesses when other banks wouldn’t.

The lengthy “break up” letter was published in every major newspaper. NAB also hung an enlarged copy of the letter — some three stories tall — on the side of its headquarters.

Central to the campaign, NAB is promising to pay customer fees if they switch mortgages from Commonwealth or Westpac.

NAB’s ”break-up” campaign encompasses an elaborate mix of marketing media including a series of newspaper ads, YouTube videos, street teams stunts, chalk drawings on sidewalks, banners strung from helicopters, guerilla tweets, a special website and light projections on the side of buildings.

Eighteen months ago, NAB debuted the tagline “More Give, Less Take,” while axing fees and offering cheaper home loans.

NAB ‘BREAK UP’ MICROSITE

Crazy guerilla tactics

NAB really went nuts with this campaign. For instance, they hired police to escort a piano man to the headquarters of competitor ANZ, where he proceeded to play “break-up” love songs outside the building.

NAB sent employee street teams to circulate outside branches of Commonwealth, Westpac and ANZ where customers were handed tissues and CDs full of “break-up” songs.

And for the kickoff on Valentine’s, NAB sent 60 couples out to restaurants, trains and various public landmarks across Australia. The “couples” — played by actors — engaged in intricate (and potentially uncomfortable) “break up” skits, with one actor playing the part of NAB and the other — the one getting dumped – was another bank.

All these guerilla tactics generated exponential PR returns for NAB. Google lists some 460 news articles about the campaign, plus countless other blog posts.

NAB used chalk to spread its message on city streets.

NAB smacks competitors YouTube videos

NAB created a special subsite for the campaign, where you can watch some hilarious video parodies of NAB really sticking it to peers. In total, NAB’s videos have been viewed over 285,000 on YouTube.

NAB USES CHOPPER TO TAUNT RIVALS
They flew this banner outside the headquarter offices of Commonwealth, ANZ and Westpac.

NAB CRASHES COMMONWEALTH BANK LUNCHEON
A team of NAB waiters interrupts rival banking execs at lunch with a “break-up” cake delivered in song, “You’re Dumped.”

NAB ABMUSHES WESTPAC MANAGERS DURING MEETING
NAB slaps a poster outside a Westpac management meeting…31 floors up.

NAB SNEAKS UP ON YACHT FULL OF ANZ BANKERS
“We visited some unsuspecting ANZ execs having a lunchtime cruise on their yacht,” NAB said.
“They weren’t too happy about it. Well tough noogies.”

‘Accidental’ tweet goes viral

In mid February, just a few days prior to officially launching the “break-up” campaign, the following tweet mysteriously appeared on NAB’s Twitter account:

The bizarre message was retweeted by hundreds of other Twitter users, most of whom assumed one of the NAB’s employees had slipped up and accidentally sent a personal tweet from the bank’s account. Not the case. It was a actually a sophisticated PR ploy to get people following NAB on Twitter, a ruse that was revealed in a press release and subsequent tweets about the bank’s “break-up” campaign.

Westpac, an competitor of NAB, was one of those who fell for the bait. They glibly chimed in with their own tweet:

In its tweet, Westpac was alluding to an incident back in early 2010 when a member of Westpac’s social media team accidental tweeted, “Oh so very over it today.”

Tim Burrowes, writing for Mumbrella, praised NAB for the Twitter trick. “Punking Westpac into promoting the offer — sheer brilliance,” he said. “What is also impressive is that NAB was willing to take a risk.”

According to Burrowes, the Twitter ruse was the brainchild of NAB’s own social media team rather than any of its agencies. For other parts of the campaign, however, the bank relied on agency partner Clemenger BBDO.

On Valentine’s Day, NAB’s Twitter account linked to a video featuring dating columnist Zoe Foster, explaining how couples tended to re-evaluate the merit of staying in an unhappy relationship come Valentine’s Day. The video ended by saying re-appraising unsatisfactory relationships with banks shouldn’t be any different.

NAB has accrued 3,391 followers on on Twitter and 2,898 Facebook likes.

War escalates as rival banks punch back

Not more than a week after NAB debuted its “break-up” campaign, competitors Commonwealth and Westpac responded with home loan offers of their own. Commonwealth is offering $1,200 to NAB customers who refinance their mortgages, plus another $100 if they switch credit card accounts. Westpac’s offer is more modest: $700 in refinance fees.

In what has shaped up to be a full-fledged Aussie-style banking war, NAB would appear to have its rivals right where they want them. Whenever the competition reacts to your moves, it positions you the market leader. You lead, they follow.

Westpac downplayed the situation, denying that its offer was in direct response to NAB. Commonwealth, however, took the campaign head on. In an email to staff, Commonwealth’s head of retail banking attacked NAB, saying it would directly target NAB’s customers and compete with its rival on price.

“If they want to play games with price — the only lever available to them — I’m happy to compete to retain customers,” he wrote.

According to the Herald Sun, Commonwealth has about one-third of the Australian mortgage market, slightly ahead of Westpac, with NAB and ANZ each claiming about 18%.

NAB CEO had concerns about the campaign

NAB’s CEO, Cameron Clyne, told The Australian that he had three fears about the campaign prior to launching it. The first was that competitors would have no reaction at all.

“The second concern was that one of our competitors would move to our position, lowering (mortgage) rates and cutting fees for all of their customers, not just their existing customers,” Clyne said. “Because then we’d have no point of differentiation.”

“The third move that concerned us was a wholesale acquisition strategy, with deals being offered to all bank customers,” Clyne added.

“The thing that really gets on my nerves is this nonsense that NAB is destroying industry profitability,” Clyne said.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, all four of Australia’s big banks — Commonwealth, NAB, ANZ and Westpac — are on track for multi-billion profits in 2011.

Christopher Zinn, a spokesman with a consumer advocacy group, warned that NAB’s campaign drawing so much attention to cultural changes might invite an uncomfortable level of scrutiny.

“It’s very easy to say but it’s actually an incredibly hard thing to do and execute,” Zinn told The Age. “And that’s the real risk they take in saying we’ve changed but not being able to convince people that that’s the case.”

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• Commonwealth Bank Uses Facebook to Give Money Back to Community
• The Boston Globe and Banks vs. Credit Unions: A Misguided Argument
• Credit Union Launches ‘Check In for Charity’ Social Media Drive
• BofA’s $5 Monthly Debit Fee: The Backlash, The Fallout and What It All Means

You’d have to be crazy to not want to work for this Australian investment bank. Macquarie’s new Sydney headquarters is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

Clive Wilkinson Architects, who designed the space for Macquarie, describes the new 330,000 square foot building as a “workplace of the future.” There are plazas, gardens, squares, playrooms, a library, a dining room, a coffee house and yes, even a tree house.

The building is split into two masses: a ten-story block facing the city, and another 6-story block stepping down to the waterside. Bridges link the two building masses, crossing a massive atrium.

Within the building’s voluminous atrium are 26 different glass-enclosed meeting pods, each decorated with candy-colored paints and furnishings.

The functional parts of the building are divided into a series of flexible workspaces called “neighborhoods,” each accommodating roughly 100 of the 3,330 employees that work at the facility.

There aren’t any traditional cubicles in this HQ. Employees don’t have assigned desks. Instead they are given an “anchor point” — their designated “home base” with a locker and storage. The concept, called “activity-based working,” lets employees choose each day where and how they want to work — from collaborative bench seating or breakout spaces to lounges or small private stations for solo projects.

“All types of work processes are supported by tailor-made work-settings available to everyone,” according to a promotional video about the building.

If it sounds a little New Age, it is — a bold vision of the modern, egalitarian workplace utopia. It may be ambitious in its idealism, but 77% of Macquarie’s employees indeed say they “love the freedom to change their work spaces each day,” and more than half the staff does so on a daily basis.

The building is said to have been designed to the highest levels of LEED green efficiency, using revolutionary technologies like harbor water cooling, chilled beams and zone controlled lighting.

The project has been collecting accolades and awards for not only architecture and design but also for environmental sustainability and workplace functionality.

A concept this crazy, this cool and this contemporary was the brainchild of Clive Wilkinson Architects, the design architect for the project, who worked in collaboration with the local firm Woods Bagot as executive architects, and Fitzpatrick + Partners who designed the exterior of the building. Clive Wilkinson Architects describe the project in grand terms, talking about blending architectural forms to create something that’s “part space station, part vertical Greek village.”

• “Within the office floors, we designed plazas with themes based on ancient collaboration typologies.”
• “The meeting pods are a powerful celebration of collaboration” — a place where employees are “discovering the depth and potential of their own community.”
• “Tableaus of collective endeavor” that draw “modern parallels with Gothic cathedrals.”

A Greek village? Ancient typologies? Gothic cathedrals? Tableaus of wha…? Whoah, it sure takes a lot of fancy architectural vernacular to say “this is one badass place to work!”

Photo Credits: Shannon McGrath

MACQUARIE – HQ VIDEO

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• 6-Pack of Awesome & Gorgeous Bank HQs
• Retail Branch Strategy Deploys Flagship Brand ‘Finance Shops’
• Gen-Y Designs a Branch for Themselves
• DBS Bank to Crowdsource Gen-Y Branch Concepts

It’s called Santander City. This sprawling corporate HQ for one of Europe’s biggest banks is a visually stunning concept integrating advanced robotics, interactive design and LED-based art murals.

Santander City’s “El Faro” Visitors Center, is the gateway to Santander Group’s financial complex. The center is a creative mix of advanced robotics, hi-res LED paneled columns and interactive interface design that offer engaging ways to explore the group’s history and global presence. Visitors to the center can interact with information about the banking group, money markets and even the campus itself.

Robotic Butlers

The most amazing aspect of the facility are the Santander Interactive Guest Assistants (SiGA for short), little red robots using GPS technology to guide visitors around the campus. The knee-high robots are a little shorter than R2D2, but like the stumpy Star Wars droid, they are fluent in multiple languages.

“When the visitor arrives, they find a touch screen console where they can choose a language and their destination — a meeting room, the auditorium or the exit to the bus station,” says João Serpa, Project Manager with Ydreams, the design firm that gave Santander City its unique flair.

“It’s Santander’s very own family of robotic butlers,” adds Luís Carvalho, Ydreams Operations Director.

“This is probably the first application that uses ‘swarm robotics’ in a commercial context,” notes Luís Vargas, an Industrial Designer with Ydreams. “We’ve developed a set of robots that function in a crowded space — 24/7, 365 days a year.”

Augmented Reality Model

Ydreams built a huge architectural model of the Santander’s campus. They translated the model into 3D space, then used augmented reality technology to superimpose an additional layer of digital information. Visitors can scroll any one of four touch-screens across the diorama to explore points of interest and architectural details.

“The main idea is that these four screens look like they’re transparent,” Vargas explains.

The Wall

Inside Santander City’s Visitor Center, Ydreams had a huge wall — a huge opportunity to do something dramatic. They created a massive motion-sensing video wall out of touch-screens.

“The main feature we wanted this wall to have was the ability to function on different stages depending on the user’s distance to the wall itself,” Leonel Duarte, Ydreams Creative Director, says. “The application is aware of what’s around and can react and adapt itself to different conditions.”

Santander has over $1 trillion in assets, 90 million customers, 11,178 branches and 130,000 employees. Retail banking — the main aspect of Santander’s operations — generates 82% of the group’s profit.

SANTANDER – TOUR OF HQ FEATURES

SANTANDER HQ IN SANTANDER, SPAIN
There is a marked difference between the new HQ and the old, historic one in the bank’s founding city.

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• Uncommon Objects
• The Coolest Bank HQ You’ve Ever Seen
• RFID Chips Spell End to Branch Lines for High-Value Customers
• ATM 2.0: The Future of Self-Service

AXION
Dexia’s youth bank, exclusively for Gen-Y.

This idea of a bank-within-a-bank is not entirely unique. For instance, Bank of the Wichitas created Redneck Bank, an online/direct spinoff targeting Midwest mullet lovers. But Redneck is merely a reskinned bank with a lifestyle veneer. What Axion is doing is quite different: unique products, promotions and educational resources exclusively targeted to a narrow audience segment and marketed under a separate standalone bank brand.

By 2020, the retail financial landscape could be littered with hundreds — if not thousands — of these micro-niche banks. A big bank that may be struggling to serve everyone today could be completely transformed into a collection of sucecssful sub-brands 10-20 years from now. Instead of one corporate website, think “many different websites,” all with different styles and different products.

The ‘Banner Concerts’ Concept

To promote Axion back in 2009, Dexia created one of the most innovative promotions of the year — in any industry. Axion introduced what it believes is an internet-first: “Axion Banner Concerts.” The bank streamed rock concerts — real live-gigs — within the frames of traditional banner ads. There’s no easier way to explain it. You just have to see it.

First, Axion started with a contest to select 25 young, up-and-coming bands. Then they invited each of these bands to perform live on a specially-constructed sound stage. The filmed concert was broadcast live, and streamed onto popular Gen-Y websites in a complex media plan. Axion provided an “embed” option so bands could easily incorporate performances into their websites, fan blogs and social network pages.

BAND PLAYS CONCERT IN LEADERBOARD SIZE BANNER AD
Click on the ad to play the concert and see how it works or view the performance on YouTube.

TIM VAN HAMEL – “GARDEN OF WEEDS”
Click on the ad to play the concert or watch it on YouTube.

Clicking on one of the banner ads would drive visitors to the Banner Concert microsite, where the public could vote for their favorite among the 25 bands. The winner got to perform a live gig at Ancienne Belgique, one of Belgium’s biggest concert halls, with live streaming on an Axion Web-TV channel.

Axion supported the Banner Concert series with a mix of media, including emails, an ad on MTV, and by spreading posters in music stores, CD shops, bars and restaurants. The Banner Concert campaign was developed by agency Boondoggle.

The campaign’s results are impressive:

• 6,807,442 banner impressions on well known internet sites
• The “embed” option on bands’ fan pages and blogs generated another 43,479 impressions.
• 44,845 unique visitors hit the campaign’s microsite.
• 7,581 people voted for their favorite band, more than half utilizing a SMS text-based voting option via their mobile phones.

The campaign won several awards, including 5 Golden Lions in Cannes. For the Banner Concert project’s innovative use of online technologies, its creativity, imagination and the bank’s utter commitment to a Gen-Y audience, The Financial Brand is also bestowing one of its Breakthrough Brand Awards to Axion. Great work and congratulations!

PROMOTIONAL POSTER

CAMPAIGN MICROSITE
Each banner ad led to a microsite showcasing a collage of all 25 bands’ performances. There the public could vote for their favorite show. There’s a little navigation strip at the bottom of the site with links to Axion, but the Axion brand should probably be more prominent. You might not ever know this was a promo hosted by a bank.

Bands play their concerts on a stage that was exactly the same proportions as traditional online banner ads. The idea to have bands perform — quite literally – within the confines of a banner ad is simply brilliant. Concerts were filmed and produced by Mojuice. The sets were developed by Stakka Concepts.

VIDEO CASE STUDY
A 3-minute YouTube video summarizes the entire project nicely,
including some behind-the-scenes footage.

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• Bank Hosts Band Contest on Facebook, Winner Opens for Huey Lewis
• Branded YouTube Channels: Super Cool, Super Expensive
• New Visual Trends in Retail Banking Websites
• Online Marketing: How Do You Stack Up?

Well, for starters, Branson is exceptionally good with money. Who better to run a bank than a guy who makes money almost faster than it can be printed?

But there’s a more serious and strategic reason Branson is launching a new financial brand right now: Every financial institution established prior to the credit crisis has, in the consumer’s eyes, a somewhat tarnished brand. People are apt to lump most pre-2009 financial brands into the same category, at least to some degree, making them share equal bits of blame. Guilt through complicit complacency, if nothing else.

Why do you think consumers have responded so enthusiastically to Ally Bank? Folks don’t really know/care that Ally is simply a reskinned GMAC. People love the fact that the bank is fresh and funny. It’s a new brand, so it’s new to them.

Reality Check: The financial industry is ripe for new “challenger brands” to come in and rock the status quo.

Branson’s announcement that he is expanding Virgin Money to become a full-fledged bank — with branches! — undoubtedly shocked those in the financial industry. If you’re like any of those Branson has challenged before, you’re probably reacting with a mix of anxious excitement and fearful nausea.

The Virgin brand — in any industry — is known for shaking things up. Branson loves doing things that everyone else says shouldn’t- or couldn’t be done. He takes chances. But when it’s all done (usually with great success), everyone looks back and admires Virgin’s unique flair. It’s a stylish and sexy combination of courage and cunning that reflects the cavalier playboy behind the brand.

And the same thing is bound to happen in the financial industry. But don’t despair; there is a silver lining. A few years from now, everyone will be thanking Virgin for coming along and loosening up banking. Branson will burn banking’s figurative (yet ever so restrictive and uncomfortable) bra, and liberated financial marketers will owe Virgin their gratitude for defining the new extremes of “what’s acceptable.” Financial marketers will be able to rationalize their crazy new ideas by pointing to Virgin and saying, “See! At least we’re not that far out there!”

If you doubt Virgin’s powers of disruption, all you have to do is look at what the brand has already done in other industries. These guys are smart marketers, crazy innovators, and they know how to execute. They are creative, provocative and obsess over details. Just look. These guys bring their A-game every day, something that should scare everyone in retail banking. Their sometimes lewd nature may not appeal to everyone, but then again, the best brands never do.

Much like this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, The Financial Brand could bestow a “Breakthrough Brand Award” for what the Virgin Bank brand will likely achieve. But that feels a tad premature, so we’ll wait and see what comes next.

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• 10 Of The Best Banking Brands To Watch
• Making Banking Easy Isn’t Easy
• 7 Steps to Find Your Brand’s Personality
• Video: What is a Brand?

In northern Spain, there’s a bank that really gets branding. It’s called Caja Navarra, or CAN for short, and they could show community banks in the United States a thing or two about what’s really possible with “community banking.”

They didn’t just slap a bunch of generic principles together and call it a brand strategy. CAN has wrapped itself entirely around one, two-word concept: Civic Banking. The brand strategy is built solely around transparency, accountability and, above all, social responsibility.

Never before has The Financial Brand seen a bank so fully embrace a singular idea as much as CAN, for which Caja Navarra earns itself a Breakthrough Brand Award. In fact, there’s so many ways in which Caja Navarra lives out it’s “civic banking” strategy that it’s hard to find them all (much less remember to write about them).

The CAN website starts by detailing five “rights” they believe their customers are entitled to:

1. Know how much money the bank makes off of them.
2. Know and decide how customers’ deposits are put to work by the bank.
3. Determine how the bank’s profits are used to support socially-responsible projects.
4. Know what progress is being made by the socially-responsible projects the bank supports.
5. Help out by volunteering — giving their time and energy (not just their money) to socially-responsible programs.

You’d expect CAN, a bank centered around the community, to utilize social media…and they do. You can find Caja Navarra on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Friendfeed. And they are active — very active. They’ve tweeted over 2,000 times and have more than 500 followers. They have over 250 photos on Flickr.

The bank also has what it touts as “the largest social network in Spain,” including the CAN Civic Banking Community, where there are over 1,000 blogs about various socially-responsible projects.

The bank has more social networks (maybe too many to count). Here are some of the bank’s proprietary social media projects, all bearing the Caja Navarra brand:

• Volcan – more than 10,000 volunteers look for- and participate in volunteering opportunities in Spain or around the world
• Eurecan – network and community of entrepreneurs, including its own blog
• Tribucan – educational community
• Pluralcan – dedicated to helping women in the workplace
• Estoyenlista.com – a hybrid P2P lending effort

It’s not all just about the online community though. The bank has around 250 representatives that are fully mobile and will come to people’s homes. The bank has also redesigned its branches to function as community spaces. Anyone can walk in and surf the net for free. And one day a week, each branch hosts a public event like a concert, magic show, theater production or children’s book reading.

Customers Control the Profits

With CAN’s “You Choose, You Decide” program, customers can choose up to three general categories or specific projects within them. There are nine different categories: disability and welfare, research, cooperation, environment, employment and entrepreneurs, culture, preservation of heritage, sports and leisure. Customers can submit a project, or review other projects to see which ones they’d like to support.

Each time a customer gets a product or service from Caja Navarra, they choose where the profits will be spent, making customers feel with the bank and their community.

80% of customers choose where and how 30% of the bank’s profits are used. Last year 500,000 CAN customers decided how EUR 50 million would be distributed to over 2,700 projects. As of 2005, CAN customers decide where 100% of the bank’s socially-responsible spending goes.

In an effort to be completely transparent, CAN sends each customer an annual statement showing how much the bank made in profits, and what, exactly, the bank did with those profits.

Feedback & Measurement

CAN created an online survey so they can hear from customers how well they are doing with delivering on their ideals. It’s a great survey, and worth a look.

They also took the standard, academic, predictable survey questions you’d expect and phrased them in a way customers can actually relate to, an accomplishment that’s all the more impressive when you realize English isn’t this bank’s native language. One question with a 1-10 rating scale reads, “”At CAN, they are grateful when I complain or demand explanations for a mistake they have committed.”

There’s another section of the website where you are invited to “vialoga” with Can. It’s another feedback mechanism, where customers are asked questions like, “What would you do if you were the manager/manageress of a branch of CAN?”

Reality Check: You can say your brand is about anything you like, but if you aren’t measuring yourself according to the principles you espouse — like CAN is doing — then your brand strategy is basically meaningless.

Bottom Line: Between 2001 and 2007 Caja Navarra moved from 41st to 4th in return on equity, 20th to 12th in after-tax profits, and from 16th to 5th in margin per employee compared to other Spanish banks.

The Caja Navarra Website
You can get lost exploring all the various aspects, angles and components of “Civic Banking” on the CAN website, which has almost entirely been translated into English.

Virtual Host
Despite being both helpful and quite charming, the website’s ever-present virtual host cannot be muted so you may hear the same recording many times.

Caja Navarra’s “Civic Banking Community
Just one of the successful and vibrant online social media sites the bank has created.

Community Facilities
Customers can reserve and use special community meeting rooms in CAN’s 400 branch locations, what the bank calls “Cancha Offices.” There’s a cool, interactive tour of the facilities online, but it’s in Spanish.

Interactive History
One of the coolest interactive histories you’ll ever see for a financial institution.

Cancha Magazine
Cancha is CAN’s magazine about civic banking. It is solely focused on the bank’s values and how it lives them out. Cancha has multiple definitions and connotations. It can mean something like a “forum,” a “stadium” or a “field.” It can also mean “your element” (as in “está en su cancha,” or “he’s in his element, as well as a rough translation to “street cred.” Whatever the case, CAN has Cancha. Lots of it.

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• Santander’s HQ: High-Tech Wonderland with Robotic Butlers
• Bank’s Massive Guerilla ‘Break-Up’ Campaign Mocks Competitors
• The Coolest Bank HQ You’ve Ever Seen

Deutsche Bank built a revolutionary branch prototype back in 2005, something it named Q110. Besides being a gorgeous architectural statement, the branch is one of the most progressive you’ll see anywhere in the world, combining most — if not all — of the latest ideas and newest innovations in financial retailing.

Before you read any further, go to this website and take the bank’s virtual tour. The branch could have been dull and boring and this interactive tour would still be awesome. Other banks have done virtual tours of their branches before, but never one this cool.

There are four “hot spots” you can move to within the virtual tour. In each hot spot, you can rotate your view 360° with your mouse. And not just left and right rotation. If you want to look at the ceiling, go for it. You can even zoom in [SHIFT key] and zoom out [CTRL key].

To make bank products more tangible, Q110 customers shop for financial products in off-the-shelf boxes, like in a supermarket. But Deutsche didn’t settle for a typical retail box (like Jyske or BNZ). Deutsche opted for tins. (See detail photo near the bottom of this article.) Very classy, very cool and probably very few are thrown away once they get home.

But that’s not all Deutsche Bank is retailing. They’ve got windowed storefronts displaying shelves full of soaps, candles, games, lotions, magnets, glass figurines, piggy banks, handbags, portfolios and logowear from just about every football club in Europe.

You can almost hear the bank’s salespeople saying, “What a lovely purse! Would you like a checking account with that today? There’s a discount if you get both.”

Reality Check: Most banks are good at warehousing money, but they aren’t nearly prepared to operate a retail store that includes challenges like “inventory” and “shrinkage.”

The Q110 name is short for Quartier 110, a mixed-use building on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. Friedrichstrasse is a major European shopping Mecca, so the branch’s heavy retail theme and product displays should help pull a curious and unsuspecting public off the streets and into the branch.

Occupying an impressive 13,500 square feet (1,260 square meters), Deutsche Bank’s Q110 is being used as a platform for testing new branch features and technologies. The bank planned on rolling out successful Q110 elements including the Trendshop, lounge, product tins, and private advisory rooms to its other branches in Munich and Aachen.

But wait, there’s more.

As if the virtual tour wasn’t enough, the bank even took their Q110 concept to SecondLife. You can see a video about it on YouTube.

The architectural design firm on the project was Schwitzke & Partner, who has nine more photos of the project at their website.

This beautiful and innovative branch prototype is unquestionably deserving of a Breakthrough Brand Award from The Financial Brand.

The vestibule has an optional concierge station.
The seating arrangement drives traffic left of the greeter.

The lounge has a half dozen sofas and seating for at least 30 people.

A close-up view of the lounge. There’s a full espresso bar, with seating for 6 more.
Notice the library of books.

The Q110 branch includes what Deutsche Bank calls the “Trendshop.”
You can buy various items for the home, family or the office. Oddly, the signs are in English.

Within the Trendshop, Deutsche Bank retails items
from around Europe, including popular sports teams.
The bank rotates various big brand, major label retail items on a regular basis.

Bank employees circulate openly as a sales cleark might do in a regular store.
They present and discuss products with customers face-to-face.

A plasma screen near the entrance shows which employees are working that day.
The headline “Ihre Ansrechpartner” literally translates to “Your Greeting Partners.”
You’ve got to love Maxi’s title in the picture (above): “Produktinnovationen.”

The open floor plan almost entirely eliminates walls, counters and other barriers.

A foosball table? That’s the second foosball table to show up in an article about branches
here at The Financial Brand in the last two weeks.

Tip of the Hat: To Casey Davis, who, in addition to Deutsche’s Q110, also wanted everyone to see this supercool branch from Jyske. Another tip of the hat to the Europeans, who seem to be leading this year’s Branch Design Ryder Cup.


This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• Citi Rolls Out Its Version of the Apple Store
• Free Tour of All 11 ING DIRECT Cafés in North America
• Four Virtual Branches Mimic Bank’s Traditional Model
• Branch Showcase: Experimental Concept Stores & Flagship Designs

Jyske’s bank of the future is as imaginative as what Umpqua did with their “branch-of-the-future” video a few years ago. The concept centers around financial products that are presented in physical packages.

Here are some of the highlights:

• They call the branch a “shop.”
• The branch features a conceirge, called the AskBar.
• They are using a hotel-style check-in desk as their transaction/teller station(s), something they call the MoneyBar.
• They call the area between the various bars The Market Square. That’s where you’ll find Theme Island, with stacks of financial products packaged in boxes (see The Financial Brand’s previous coverage of BNZ’s pre-packaged, boxed financial products).
• They have a TestBar, where you can scan any of the boxed products for an on-screen tutorial.
• The branch has an Oasis, something that looks a lot more like a reading room than the waiting room it would be in a regular branch.
• Jyske says it wants to be known for its “good coffee,” so they’ve placed their CoffeeBar next to full-length windows surrounding the branch.

Key Question: Can anyone explain the catfish on the wall that “sets the mood” and “tells the history” of the bank?

The Financial Brand is honoring Jyske Bank with a Breakthrough Brand Award for having a very cool video about an incredible branch with great design and more features than one can list in a single article. Jyske could open a branch in any city in the Western world and wow just about everyone. I mean, come on: Who can possibly resist a conference room table made out of a foosball table? By the way, the conference room has a name too: Inspiration.

That’s an understatement.

Tip of the Hat: To Casey Davis, for bringing Jyske Bank to The Financial Brand’s attention.

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• Branch Showcase: Experimental Concept Stores & Flagship Designs
• Citi Rolls Out Its Version of the Apple Store
• Gen-Y Designs a Branch for Themselves
• Customers Saddle Up With Staff in ‘Air Bank’ Branch

O Bee Credit Union has partnered with a local newspaper and the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions to create one of the most original, most creative and most engaging financial-education promotions ever attempted.

The credit union’s name, “O BEE,” is the centerpiece of a massive, 6-acre maze made from corn. They call it “The Amazing Money Maze.”

The “Amazing Money Maze” from O Bee Credit Union. Look closely. There are two bridges.

There are two separate corn mazes, a 1.2-mile maze and a 1.8-mile maze. In each maze there are six checkpoints. As participants work their way through one of two mazes, they try to answer questions at different checkpoints about savings, budgeting, investing, debt, credit, identity theft, retirement, college, insurance, credit score, checking/debit and housing. Each checkpoint has a question for adults, teens and children.

After reviewing the questions and answers, participants get their checkpoint card punched to enter to win a weekly drawing for movie tickets, iPods, savings bonds, piggybanks, bags of shredded money, museum prizes, martial arts lessons, dance lessons and other stuff kids dig.

The maze is created by the hyper-imaginative folks at the Rutledge Corn Maze. In previous years, the farm’s mazes have been more conventional in their design, but still cool nonetheless.

Admission is $7. The maze is currently “haunted” for the Halloween season. Oooooh spooky!

This multi-way co-promotion is also a fund-raiser for programs that help promote financial education throughout the credit union’s communities.

If you want to see more, check out the website they’ve got set-up at amazingmoneymaze.com.

O Bee: One A Mazing Brand

An incredibly engaging financial education promo isn’t the only thing the O Bee brand has to be proud of. For instance, the “O Bee” name name is great.

For starters, it’s highly unusual, which not only helps the credit union get noticed and stand out, it allows them to have the ultra-simple web address obee.com. But the name makes sense too. You see, it’s the phonetic spelling of “O.B.,” short for “Olympia Brewing.” The credit union, the 99th ever started in the country, was originally founded in 1955 to serve the employees of Olympia Brewing.

The ‘O Bee’ name, logo and slogan all work together
to help create a rich and interesting brand story.

The credit union’s slogan, “Refreshingly Familiar,” is refreshingly unique for the financial industry. The slogan says the credit union is a comfortable place to do business, while simultaneously suggesting they have a personality and approach unlike “those other guys.”

For cutting through the clutter by carving their unique name into a cornfield, O Bee is getting a Breakthrough Brand Award from The Financial Brand.

This article © 2012 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced.

Similar Articles:

• Money Grows on Trees in RaboDirect PR Guerilla Stunt
• Santander’s HQ: High-Tech Wonderland with Robotic Butlers
• People React Strangely in Money Tree Experiment
• Hopping 3 Tropical Isles of Financial Education