On Monday, The Boston Globe ran a story on Fidelity Investments’ new high-interest checking account. Launched largely as a reaction to efforts by banks like BofA to woo brokerage house customers with offers of free or discounted online equity trades, the account has a number of attractive features. This news continues what The Globe has called the, “push and pull within the financial services industry as banks and brokerage houses try to top each other’s services….” Yet, the big banks and brokerage houses aren’t the only players in this field. What The Globe didn’t report on are the number of community banks who will also need to react to broadening offers of convenient, sophisticated high-interest checking accounts. Which is not to say that local, communty banks can’t compete. By doing what many do so well — interacting with their customers and responding to what they want, the saavy will continue earning new accounts and keeping customers happy. The trick is to always remind customers and prospects about what sets them apart, while staying on the leading edge of service and convenience.
Posted by Kelly on August 29th, 2007
Filed under Banking, Marketing | No Comments »
OK, so now that I am into this whole “blogging” thing I have been looking at various other blogs on the “Interweb.” I searched for the Best Blog Awards on the net and it came back with various categories, “best comic strip,” “best humor blog,” “best photo blog,” etc, etc. However, none of the winners really captured my interest. The best humor blog was all about politics, even if they were poking fun at our government, I did not see how that won best humor. The best comic strip category was for a blog, but I was unaware “comic strip blogs” existed. Clearly I need to get out and surf the blog net more.
So my question is…what makes a blog a good blog? Is it the content? Is it the design? Is it the uniqueness? Does anybody really know??
Posted by Kristin on August 27th, 2007
Filed under Miscellaneous | No Comments »
Check out Ambroise, created by French type designer Jean François Porchez. Notable characters are the “g”, “y” and “K”, which are apparently close adaptations to the original 19th century Firmin Didot design. There are a lot of typefaces that fall into the Didot/Bodini category, but with Ambroise in particular, there is an incredible elegance to the characters (especially that “K”). It looks like it also has some tame alternate characters incase this “g” does not suit your needs.
FontShop is exclusively selling Porchez’s work in the US. Go here to check out some of his other excellent creations. FontShop of course did a nice write up on the new additions to their catalogue.
Posted by James on August 24th, 2007
Filed under Design | No Comments »
If you do not already consider gangster sign language during the creative planning stage of your campaign’s development, you may want to reconsider. Virginia Tourism Corp learned this lesson the hard way after spending $400,000 in creative development for their “Live Passionately” campaign. The print campaign includes an image of a woman making a hand gesture of a heart. This same hand gesture is also used by the Gangster Disciples (and clearly they’ve trademarked it). Therefore, VTC has decided to remove this gesture from the imagery in their campaign so as not to condone the gangsta lifestyle (this is my interpretation; exact rationale has been made public on the VTC’s website).
Question: When did gangster sign language become so powerful that the rest of the world decided to claim defeat on ever using their forefingers and thumbs to create a heart? What other symbolism can a hand-shaped heart gesture have? Can this gesture really be misconstrued to mean anything other than love? And, I don’t know too much about gangs but isn’t one of their core strengths the fact that you can find brotherly love there when the rest of the world has failed you? So, wouldn’t it be logical to think that perhaps we’re all using this gesture in the same manner, to express the same intention – love? I’d like to consider this a multi-cultural breakthrough, no?
The good news for VTC is that their campaign hasn’t officially launched. They discovered this sign language controversy during a soft launch of the campaign so there was time to modify the campaign. Phew!
Posted by Marrianne on August 22nd, 2007
Filed under Advertising, Fun, Marketing | No Comments »
Er, it won’t be going to the marketing firm who relaunched a local law firm’s career page recently. The marketing firm completely ripped off a creative concept from an advertising giant who has provided our industry with decades of case studies in successful mass marketing. Despite this, the law firm’s new career page and the marketing firm received front page coverage in last week’s Boston Business Journal. I wonder what the marketing firm’s creative strategy was – copy and paste?
Posted by Marrianne on August 17th, 2007
Filed under Advertising, Legal, Marketing | No Comments »