The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Yes, it’s a bank trying to sound supportive and inspirational.

Actually, it’s not just a bank … it’s Citibank, the company who has been bathed in all manner of scandals from wrongful selling of financial products to the wrongful use of their customers cash and countless things in-between.

If you can’t read the copy properly [which in some ways, you should be grateful for], here it is in all it’s patronising, contrived horror-story glory …

If they were being honest, they would add the following at the bottom of all that fawning praise for the next generations potential:

“… and Citibank will turn down your dreams for helping the World with cures for illness or opportunities for technology because we only help the big boys unless you are willing for us to weigh you down with so much debt that you’d have to turn into the next Google to stand a chance of actually making your dream a commercial reality.”

Though now I come to think about it, the next generation won’t even get a chance to be turned down for a loan, because Citibank will have burdened their family with such high mortgage and credit card debt, they won’t be able to be sent to a school or university that can help them nurture their dreams, ambitions and hopes for a better, happier future.

I find it fascinating that banks – after all the widely acknowledged shit they have done and caused – continue with this head-in-the-sand approach to marketing.

If Citibank were as clean-as-a-whistle, I’d get it [though they should be telling people that rather than some meaningless, bland corporate-talk beigeness] but they’re not and they’d stand far more chance in getting people to believe them if they followed what I call the 8 Mile strategy and took on all the stuff people could say about them, to rob them of the power that they have over them.

But sadly the financial industry don’t admit failure or fault. They have been told by their highly paid lawyers, it’s better to stick it out, regardless of the anger it causes, than try to put the past right and face paying out money.

And that is why I hate banks.

I shouldn’t hate banks. What they do – in theory – is a wonderful thing … but those days are long past, which is why society has to put up with this sort of marketing bollocks that does more to alienate than attract. But they don’t care, because it’s to keep them in the delusional bubble they reside in which is why the only good thing I can say to Citibank about this campaign, is that at least they’re not HSBC.

Bank advertising. The scariest thing you’ll see this halloween.