Crap Marketing Campaign of the Day, Merrill Lynch Edition

This is the new branding campaign for Merrill Lynch, and it’s stunningly crap. First an old-fashioned fountain pen flies in from the right, to be met by a mirroring BofA (BAC) logo (the Merrill logo seems to have been ditched) coming in from the left. The fountain pen then does a weird auto-rotate thing, only to start writing in a bold, modern, san-serif font! (I think it might be Benton Sans.)

What does the pen write? The new slogan: “Signed, sealed and delivering”. I’m a fan of the Oxford comma, so I hate this slogan on grammatical grounds alone. But that to one side, the slogan not only means nothing, it also signifies nothing, beyond vague allusions to a Stevie Wonder hit and the even vaguer concept that a brokerage should, er, be delivering something.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair. If you click through to the full PDF, it’ll tell you what they’re delivering on:

Our aim is clear: To continue delivering on the great potential of our union by helping to grow businesses like yours.

Yeah, they used grow as a transitive verb, which is really ugly. But not as ugly as their new logo:

This takes lazy to a whole new level. The location of the logo is particularly odd: it looks as though Bank of America gets to keep its old logo, while Merrill Lynch, having lost its bull, is left with nothing at all.

Finally, to the right of the logo is a bunch of dense all-caps jargon in which the word “global” appears three times and the word “banking” twice, just in case we were unsure what exactly a bank does.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Bank of America is telling me it does banking, because otherwise I might suspect it does little more than put together clichéd and unimaginative marketing campaigns. It seems to be very good at that.

Comments

[Roger Knights:]

"the word “global” appears three times ..."

I'd feel safer it it said "local"!

Jun 22 06:14 AM

[jackooo:]

Least of their problems...

Jun 22 12:12 PM

[Acronym:]

There is a lot of talent at Merrill Lynch and I feel that the remaining advisers have the opportunity to do right by their clients. I don't know much about Bank of America but I can say that they have acquired a great deal of wisdom. I feel they should adopt more of a venture capitalist business model. Where they maintain stricter than the average compliance practices and reward the brokers for honest client oriented business. It would mean weening some brokers off the old system of buying/selling based on what is popular and instead forcing them to hold true to each brokers stated investment discipline and their client's wishes. Let's be serious, outside of forecasted returns, what broker was savvy enough to have sub prime derivatives as a part of their investment arsenal.

Jun 22 02:06 PM

[ADHD Trader:]

Research Reports form BAC Merrill being shared with clients have "The Bull" logo to the left of the word Merrill

Jun 22 04:28 PM

[Econ 101:]

And which part of ML-BAC do you work for, you shill? These are two over paid sets of crooks stiched together by Paulson and Bernanke to cover payoffs to Goldman Sacks at the expense of the American Taxpayer. Break up BAC, Citi and GS - stop selling out our Grandchildren to these wall street thieves.

It is only called "Class Warfare" when the underclass fights back against the teriney of the gentry.


On Jun 22 02:06 PM Acronym wrote:

> There is a lot of talent at Merrill Lynch and I feel that the remaining
> advisers have the opportunity to do right by their clients. I don't
> know much about Bank of America but I can say that they have acquired
> a great deal of wisdom. I feel they should adopt more of a venture
> capitalist business model. Where they maintain stricter than the
> average compliance practices and reward the brokers for honest client
> oriented business. It would mean weening some brokers off the old
> system of buying/selling based on what is popular and instead forcing
> them to hold true to each brokers stated investment discipline and
> their client's wishes. Let's be serious, outside of forecasted returns,
> what broker was savvy enough to have sub prime derivatives as a part
> of their investment arsenal.

Jun 22 04:52 PM

[Skeptical Ben:]

All of B of A's decisions are so questionable. Buying Countrywide. Then spending a fortune to settle lawsuits for CW. Then dropping the CW name and spending plenty to re-brand everything. Buying Merrill Lynch. Almost disintegrating because of buying Merrill Lynch. But the stupidest thing they can do is to obscure ML's identity. Bring back Glass-Steagall.

Jun 22 11:40 PM

[Old Trader:]

I can remember when the "Thundering Herd" actually had both the respect of their clients and Wall Street. My "introduction" to the markets was as a wireroom clerk at their old office in the CBOT building....sorry for waxing nostalgic...*s*.

Jun 22 11:41 PM