Shortly after the Civil War – a brutal bit of American history fought to resolve whether banks and credit unions could both exist at the same time – Banker & Tradesman was founded to educate the region about, well, you know, bankers and tradesmen.
Short of hiring Cohen the Columnist, the most extraordinary marketing coup the publishers ever implemented was the name of the paper. Not Banking & Trade. Not Banks & Real Estate. No, the focus would be on the flesh-and-blood human beings, the bankers and tradesmen – not the professional disciplines and the bank buildings.
What the publisher recognized was the sad reality that banks are (how can one say it gently?) boring. It was challenging enough to sell a tabloid paper without a sports section; you didn’t want to compound the problem with excruciating stories about “banks.”
If you think I’m being too harsh, ponder the present dilemma in Boston’s plush Beacon Hill neighborhood, where residents complain that too many banks are opening branches around and about. Banks, they argue, are – well, now you have it – dull, at least compared to vegetarian tofu shops or sex shops or earnest, intellectual, independent bookstores.
You can see the problem. “Boy, Martha, I’m really glad we moved to this neighborhood. Another new bank branch just opened and I bet they have free coffee in the lobby. Who needs Happy Hour?”
Banks are going to have to fight back. There was a time when bank branches were thought to be relics of an age when columnists wrote essays with a quill pen and depositors stopped into the bank, savings book in hand. About half of all bank customers do some banking online, but branches are back; they are an important marketing tool to let the consumers know that the bank loves them very, very much.
Happy Hour
But it’s not going to work if the bank branches are seen as a detriment to the neighborhoods – a boring blight so destructive that even more home mortgages may go underwater. “My home used to be worth $850,000, until the 15th boring bank branch opened in the neighborhood.”
For the super-cool, snobby neighborhoods that dream of launching “24-hour cities” that never sleep, a bank branch has little of interest to offer. The first step must be for the banks to receive liquor licenses.
Despite all the fancy White Papers from urban planners, what really makes a cool city, or neighborhood, is about 400 places to settle down for a drink.
Even without the liquor, the banks can tap into the barroom marketing schemes. Offer better rates on CDs during Happy Hour. Bring us your money between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. and we’ll bump you up half-a-point.
The strategy of giving mom and dad a free toaster if they opened a savings account is as stale as an old piece of untoasted bread. But half-price Bloody Marys on a Saturday morning for new accounts would line them up around the block.
A puzzled landlord on Charles Street told the Boston Globe that he assumed the neighbors would rather have a safe, quiet, well-groomed bank in the neighborhood than a joint with a liquor license. That’s the kind of guy who is going to be trampled to death by the crowds rushing into the new-and-improved bank offering free chicken wings and beer for new mortgagees.
This is a two-pronged strategy: Make the bank branches fun palaces in the neighborhood, while also generating increased business. With basic checking accounts offering up little in the way of handsome profit margins, the banks are poised to do better selling that same customer a few draft beers, marked up 50 percent.
The most ubiquitous asset that the bank branches can offer up to make themselves more fun is a versatile ATM, which would allow customers to buy lottery tickets and perhaps dabble in online poker.
Even consumers who do much or most of their banking online retain a peculiar preference for banks with local branches. At least in the cool neighborhoods, the Bank of America Bar & Grille should be a fixture.
