Marketing | Advertising | Digital Media Thoughts and Observations

Racy Banking

May 21, 2009

No sooner had I posted Boring Banking than The Wall Street Journal publishes a story this week about racy banking, "Local Banks Face Big Losses," (http://bit.ly/R99KZ). The essence of it is this: About 1000 small and midsize banks around the country may be at significant risk because of the growing troubles in commercial real estate. A lot of these loans are going bad, amounting to perhaps $200 billion in loan losses by the end of 2010. The article is based on the Journal's own version of a bank stress test.

So maybe small isn't so beautiful and profitable after all.

Boring Banking

May 12, 2009

A front-page story in today's New York Times by David Segal reports that small-town bankers in Indiana are feeling tarred by the same TARP brush as their global brethren. The story's title pretty much says it all, "We're Dull, Small Banks Say, and Have Profit to Show for It" (http://bit.ly/4vaQ0).

Among the salient points is the fact that many of the bankers who run these banks grew up in the communities they now serve, and live in fear of embarrassment. Who wants to fail in front of their friends and neighbors?

Maybe Citi and BofA are not only too big to fail, they're too big for embarrassment and other moral constraints to have any moderating effect on the behavior of their executives. Global reach may be good for executive egos, but it's bad for accountability.

A reminder that small can be beautiful. And profitable.

Listener-in-Chief

May 8, 2009

In an earlier post I talked about President Obama's first 100 days, the enduring goodwill the American people have for him, and the virtually flawless campaign he ran.

We were all reminded of the famous Obama campaign discipline earlier this week when Vice President Joe Biden flapped his lips on the "Today Show" (http://bit.ly/11Vok4) with advice to avoid airplanes and subways because of swine (sorry National Pork Producers Council, H1N1) flu. The veep was clearly off message. And it didn't take but minutes for his staff and the president's staff to issue clarifications ("What the vice president meant to say was…").

Part of running a good campaign (political or marketing) is listening to yourself—and those who speak for you—and having the systems in place to quickly fine-tune your message. Or, in this case, refute it.

Just another bit of brilliant execution from the Obama campaign (er, administration).

Our Passion for Cars

May 5, 2009

Last week's news of the demise of Pontiac and of Chrysler's Chapter 11 filing reminded me about how fond we are of our cars. The mainstream media was in full tilt with remembrances of the GTO's glory days (1967, by my measure) and the rise and fall of Walter Chrysler's empire.

I grew up in a car town or, at least, what used to be a car town. The Chevrolet assembly plant is long gone from Tarrytown, New York but I can remember, like it was yesterday, the thrill of seeing the new models atop the Anchor Motor Freight trucks streaming out of town. Early in the model year, the cars would be shrouded, the better to tease us.

What is it that makes us pine for Pontiacs? Is it some perversion of Manifest Destiny to long for the open road? Or is it connected to our human desire for freedom?

Whatever it is, our passion for cars remains as fervent as ever, despite the threat of global warming, despite the decline of the U. S. auto industry. It seems, over time, that our passion for cars morphs from big to less big, from gas guzzlers to gas sippers, from gas to electricity (we'll see).

Where does that passion come from?