Friday, February 26, 2010

Citibank talk to Singapore in terms of accessibility and touchpoints

This past week Citi has been bombarding Singapore’s TV and print media slots with their latest rebranding exercise – “You, powered by Citi”. The focus has been on communicating Citibank’s accessibility in terms of instant access, instant connections and instant services. Whilst on Tuesday we found the stark full-page branding piece in The Straits Times to be disjointed and strangely positioned (see here), today they ran a very similar ad that, for us, ticks all the right boxes. Have a look at it below:

Visually it is incredibly appealing, retaining the right balance between stylised beauty (we love the “Citibank” reflection in the car windscreen) and down-to-earth believability (i.e. withdrawing cash from an ATM, albeit a drive-thru ATM). The slogan – “My bank is everywhere I am” – is strong, direct, and well integrated with the body copy, which talks about accessibility – primarily in terms of touchpoints. In contrast to Tuesday’s branding piece – where the slogan “You, powered by Citi” seemed incongruent to the message that Citibank is expanding its presence in Singapore – this ad focuses wholly on one thing: telling the reader that Citibank is “everywhere”. The ad is also well supported by an article on Citibank’s expansion in the business section.

So what is the difference between Tuesday’s ad and today’s? Visually, today’s ad conveys one, integrated aesthetic that seamlessly ties together visual, slogan, and body copy. On Tuesday the slogan suggested one thing, the body copy another, the arc yet another. In addition, whilst Tuesday’s ad appeared to be setup as a branding piece, grabbing the reader’s attention through the dominance of the “You, powered by Citi” slogan, todays is one that overtly conveys a unique selling point that is just one facet of Citi’s re-branding and re-positioning in Singapore – access. On Tuesday how "You, powered by Citi" relates to accessibility was not clearly conveyed, thus creating confusion, whereas today we are directly told "You, powered by Citi, have instant access at over 900 touchpoints islandwide." In this sense the sole focus on communicating a selling point through the new branding template (i.e. "You, powered by Citi, have instant access...") drives home a more direct, coherent and therefore powerful message.

Finally, in a separate ad that Citibank ran in today’s Straits Times for the Citi Platinum Card (note three communication pieces in one paper – impressive coverage!), we noticed the following slogan:



Does anyone else think this should be re-arranged as:

“Reward yourself more
all year long”

Although it is to be read as one sentence, there is a natural pause after the “more”, and splitting it up as they have does seem to interrupt the overall flow (given that you also tend to pause after reading the first line). Putting the "more" at the end of the first line would therefore separate the two ideas of (1) more rewards; (2) all year. Although re-arranging it in this way would lose the visual symmetry between first and second lines, an alternative suggestion would be to insert a comma after the “more”, thus:

“Reward yourself
more, all year long”

What do you think? Are we being over-analytical, or does anyone else feel that this also reads strangely? As always, do let us know by commenting below!

-TJR
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