It must be hard marketing a bank – no matter what you say it is always going to be hard to gain the respect of your customers. People are always going to view the bank as being a parasite off their money – how come you are charging me fees for my money? Business banking is probably a little different to personal banking in that you rely very heavily on your business manager to work with you in times of need. I don’t think this ever goes away – whether you are small struggling company who needs help with the wages because creditors are late paying again or a large company who just needs to cover a $500,000 cheque for the deposit on a building while we wait for some other funds to come in. So, when I saw the Kiwibank 100% Interest campaign I just took a cursory glance out of pure marketing interest.

Unfortunately, I could not really find anything particularly clever in their 100% Interest campaign – Kiwibank are basically saying they will give you 100% interest in your business if you are a customer. I guess that especially works if you owe them money – he he. Nothing like a regular call from the bank manager to help you chase creditors.

So, I got thinking, how can banks venture into the world of the new Internet, particularly sites such as Facebook? What do we want banks to actually do that would make our lives easier? I use National Bank and I do have a cool iPhone app – however it only actually shows one bank account – which is my personal one and I don’t need to look at that I only need to look at what my wife is wearing to know how quickly it was emptied – now that is 100% interest isn’t it? By the way I am only joking Haylee – dear, love, thingy mi-jig.

Seriously though, isn’t banking about actually building a relationship with your customers that justifies the fees. Is the goal for bank managers not to be seen to be interacting with the clients all the time so that you feel that in fact when times are tough whether that be eternally or that fleeting moment they will in fact “be on your side”? In fact, I think it is more a case of you and your manager battling against the big monolith – perhaps the Kiwibank 100% Interest campaign is onto something. But couldn’t bank marketing just be something so much better. What about if the focus was away from the bank and more onto the manager – they perhaps could have Facebook pages or be on Twitter – ” @bgilbert I just helped Xebidy move into a new office – I need a drink”. Perhaps in the new social world then the bank manager becomes the asset for the bank – people recommend them (maybe like LinkedIn) and the manager thus owns the clients – they move banks and take their clients. Perhaps they could enjoy a share of the fees they bring by having bigger or more active clients.

Just some thoughts really – it is a pity that the global banking system is so archaic and hence sent us into the economic turmoil that we find the world in today – and then you see the same old stuff with the likes of the Kiwibank one hundred percent campaign built on nothing more than a bit of cost per click.

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