The cult of satisfied customers

The cultish rise of the ANZ's "Barbara from A Bank" advertising maven may be tapping into the consumer banking backlash zeitgeist but does it really hold currency for the current consumer experience?

The 'Barbara' caricature - the impudent bank manager from hell - has been gathering mainstream traction, no doubt influenced by ANZ's heavy investment in advertising spend, the largest, recently, of any of the major banks.
 
According to Nielsen data ANZ has topped the sector, with advertising spend in main media up five per cent, year on year, to $53.4 million.
 
The latest instalment of the "Barbara" campaigns, created by the Melbourne office of M&C Saatchi, steers from mocking the in-branch service of 'A Bank' into the territory of home loans, highlighting the importance for home buyers having "room to move" to allow changes to their mortgage as their life changes and, the agency and bank hope, supporting the claim in the tag line that ANZ is "living in your world."

'A Bank', transparently, is Commonwealth Bank in the ANZ ads, given the yellow and black logo, and one intriguing aspect of the ANZ's approach is that one of the big banks (albeit the smallest) is taking a direct shot at the reputation and service standards of the largest.

The home loans television commercial is in the middle of a four-week run and is supported by outdoor, press and online advertising, and an in-branch campaign.

ANZ describes this series of campaigns as "iconic" and "achieving some of the highest brand recognition metrics of the past few years for ANZ and across the industry."

'Barbara' lends herself well to promoting the campaign on a viral level, resulting in over 35,000 views of the television advertisement on YouTube and the launch of several Barbara-related groups, fan pages and profiles on Facebook, with more than 60,000 fans. The M&C Saatchi campaign also won the Australian Banking & Finance magazine's Campaign of the Year.

However the effect on the battle for the consumer has yet to be articulated and industry pundits question whether it will be delivered.

ANZ has ranked number one of the major four banks in customer satisfaction for the past six years, according to Roy Morgan Research.
 
ANZ also has the lowest level of "dissatisfied" customers out of the major four banks. The difference between banks, however, is pretty minor. Seventy-six per cent of ANZ customers who count the bank as their main bank say they are satisfied. At Westpac, the lowest ranked of the big four, the score is 71 per cent.

And while all banks have been improving in customer satisfaction scores (with the recent exception of Westpac) the one bank that has made a fair first at lifting its customer satisfaction scores is Commonwealth Bank.