We here at iMedia are proud to conclude this year's Financial Marketing Summit with an Agency Shoot-Out in which two interactive shops each pitch for 15-20 minutes to win a piece of fictional business.

The winning pitch will have an article about it published in iMedia Connection.

The story: Northern Tri-State Bank (NTS) – a savings and loan bank that is a more local version of Wachovia with offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut – has had its banking operations abruptly sold to Premiere National Bank (PNB), which is akin to Bank of America or CITI.

The marketing problem for PNB is that over the last decade Northern Tri-State Bank has branded itself as a collection of neighborhood branches with a high level of customer service. Furthermore, NTS has explicitly compared itself to banks like PNB again and again, characterizing such banks as corporate giants that don't know their customers, don't relate to neighborhoods and generally don't care. NTS has coded PNB as an evil empire, and now PNB has acquired NTS!

Background: NTS has worked hard to localize the websites of its 65 branches – a central portal then leads to individually skinned pages – and has an opt-in weekly email newsletter program with 75 percent shared content but 25 percent local content that includes in-branch events, notices and the activities of different branch-sponsored activities like Little League teams. Many of the NTS branches have been on or near colleges and universities, and those branches have dedicated their local content to campus live and activities.

The challenge: NTS customers have heard about the PNB acquisition on the local TV and radio news over the weekend starting Friday night, Oct. 17. On Monday, Oct. 20, they read about the acquisition in the local newspapers. However, they have yet to receive any official communication from either NTS or PNB.

Based on the news, a Facebook group named "Save NTS!" appeared over the weekend and quickly had 732 members, but then new signups slowed significantly.

PNB has reached out to the two agencies with an RFP describing how to communicate the acquisition to NTS customers. Significantly, while the individual branches and branch employees will remain in place for the time being (PNB expects consolidation over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, but thinks that nothing will happen for the first six months) PNB will transition the NTS website to the PNB portal without localization and has no plans to continue the localized email newsletters. 

There are plenty of other banks near the 65 branch locations of NTS, so PNB is worried that customers will churn rapidly. PNB wants to communicate the following things to its newly acquired customers:

• Their deposits are safe, as are mortgages, et cetera
• There is no need to panic, withdraw funds or change banks
• In-branch service will remain high quality
• As a huge national bank PNB has resources that will benefit NTS customers
• Lots of little changes (new debit/credit cards with new passwords, a new online portal, new processes) will be coming
• While the localized online presence will disappear, PNB does not know whether or not this should be part of the outbound communications and would like to see this question addressed in the pitch

The Judges are all financial marketers – if these folks cannot choose a winner among the two pitches, then nobody can!

GET THE PRESENTATION

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Presenter: Sarah Kotlova, Tim Warder

Format: PPT