Fascinating post from Grant who takes a somewhat unique analytical approach to considering Smith Barney’s marketing “working wealth”. (Thanks Nishad for the tip)
It is a pleasure to report that the SmithBarney campaign is a superb piece of consumer centricity. It addresses the barrier in place: the fact that most consumers fail to fail to how money makes money. Now, I know this complete confounds the financial industry. “What’s not to get?” they want to know.
But that is the point of consumer-centricity. It doesn’t matter what we think. It matters what the consumer thinks, and the further they are from our standard, the harder we have to work, the more due ethnographic diligence we must exercise.
Source: This Blog Sits at the: Parsing the symbolic logic of the Smith Barney campaign
He goes on underscore that Smith Barney appear to understand their audience, and that they earn their money from working.
For the average consumer there is something impenetrable about financial planning. It’s a mystery of the old fashioned kind, not something you can clear up with a flashlight and a basset hound. No, this is one of those imponderables of the human condition, one of those things we will just never understand.
He concludes this is a well thought through approach that will resonate with customers.
In the symbolic logic of this ad, we step the consumer from where he is (capital comes from a paycheck) into a moment of identification (capital works the way the consumer works) into a proposition and a promise of control (I am working wealth.) From the old world of capital to the new world of capital with a couple of phrases and around 100 words. This is exemplary meaning management.
The only observation I would make having taken a look at the site is that the execution looks like a campaign, and they need to concentrate on better integrating this into their site. The concept is strategic, and implementation needs to look more than a plug in to the web site.
Bankwatch 