Jerry Stiller is a hoot. He could sell a Big Mac to a vegan. But he signed up for a pretty shady deal with Capital One last September.
If you live in an area with Capital One retail branches, you can’t miss the “5X” spots in which Stiller stars. The easy part here is exposing the bank’s borderline ethics.
First, Capital One states you will “always” earn five times the average national savings rate. That is a batch of bullsh&t. The interest percentage you will earn is set and fixed on day one, for a full 365 days. If the national average doubles six months from now, well, no soup for you.
Second, the fine print. You can get the “5X” rate for putting a measly $500 in your new Capital One checking account (note to existing Cap One customers – ha ha, thanks for being loyal, you can only get 1X). However, the fine print says if you don’t increase your daily balance to $5000 (that would be 10X, but would make for a lousy TV spot) within just two months, you instantly go from 5X to 1X.
This was a simple campaign for Cap One to create. Interest rates are near zero, and because of our excellent economy, aren’t going to rise significantly before this time next year.
So, if that was the easy part, what is everyone else missing?
That all this marketing by the few remaining large banks is wasted money. As we wrote during the $5 Bank of America fiasco, most Americans are married to their current bank due to laziness. That BofA blinked so fast on the debit card fee wins them the “Wussy Marketer Award” for 2011.
The CEOs of Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Capital One could huddle and agree to stop all marketing. It would devastate the ad industry, but the savings would drop directly into the CEOs’ fat wallets.
And nothing would change. New customers would still walk right in, basing their choice on branch proximity and ubiquity, and corporate scale (= false sense of security).
The best strategy for banks is the “Place” P. That’s why Chase and Citi are falling over themselves to make any deal for branch space in New York City’s Hell Kitchen, where 50-story apartment buildings are popping up like so many dandelions on a warm spring day. Trust me, when one of the banks reaches 11th Avenue, you will read about it in The New York Times.
Until then, we can enjoy the Jerry Stiller Capital One spots. They are 5X funnier than any ads the other guys run.
