It will be interesting to see whether Ally can successfully position itself as a different kind of bank given that it is actually a unit of financial giant GMAC. The decline of the Saturn, a brand that positioned itself as a different kind of car company but is actually a unit of auto giant General Motors, offers an interesting object lesson.
The only shock regarding General Motor’s bankruptcy was that it didn’t happen sooner. With the exception of recent Cadillac models, it would be hard to remember the last time “GM” and “top rated” could be found in the same sentence. From a branding perspective, GM’s brand architecture – the relationship of brands within a portfolio to each other and the relationship of brands within a portfolio to the master or corporate brand – has long been a disaster of pieces that just didn’t work together. Caddy was a success story because they made the cars less clunky and supported the new models with relatively breakthrough marketing.
Within General Motors’ battered portfolio, it’s Saturn that offers the object lesson for Ally. Saturn deserves a spot in the branding hall of fame because it pulled off the seemingly impossible: it created relevant differentiation despite the fact that it was owned by a corporate giant with an abysmal quality reputation. Saturn accomplished this by recognizing that the best brands are supported across touchpoints and operations. Its cars were the product of a unique management-labor partnership and its in-store experience broke through category norms with a no haggle policy. Its marketing - including the now legendary BBQ for customers at its Spring Hill, Tennessee plant - struck an emotional cord of made-in-America without being jingoistic.
Saturn started off with a bang but soon began a slow, steady decline that eerily mirrored General Motors’ slow, steady decline. The President of North American operations, quoted in the New York Times, said that “the only way we can make Saturn work economically is to leverage the rest of General Motors.” Saturn, was brought more closely into GM’s orbit. From an operations standpoint, industry observers noted that while the Detroit-managed Saturn was relatively quick to bring a SUV to market, it was slow to keep its core sedan fresh and unique, a problem that plagued other GM nameplates. From a branding standpoint, the shadow that GM cast made it difficult to maintain the proposition that Saturn was a different kind of car from a different kind of car company. The most recent branding campaign, which can be seen on You Tube, is well-executed effort but it could just have as easily come from Chevy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX_frSinZ2s
Which leads to Ally, the consumer banking unit of GMAC.
Ally is building its brand on an evocative brand identity, a Web-only channel strategy, and a very specific value proposition. The brand identity is a success, the channel play might turn out to only be table stakes, and there are serious cracks in the foundation of the value proposition.
The brand identity is great. Ally’s name is stunning in the way that Orange, a UK telecom provider, and Happy, a perfume from Clinique, are stunning – it utterly breaks from category norms. The logo, which seems to offer an outstretched arm, brings a degree of warmth to banking that’s hard to find at other national banks. The identity is arguably so strong that it’s almost a shame that there are no branches to extend the look and feel to.
The channel strategy might, however, not turn out to be a source of competitive advantage. Ally is a Web-only bank. But there are plenty Web-only banks, from start-ups to business units of established players. In fact, being Web only may actually be a competitive disadvantage in two regards: Ally’s competitors’ do not carry into cyberspace the baggage of being associated with a corporate behemoth; and the pre-recession branch building boom attests to consumers’ need for physical footprints. The impact of this competitive reality is that communications might have to treat Ally’s web-only status as a point of parity rather than as a point of difference.
But it’s Ally’s ability to support its value proposition that calls into question the brand’s long-term prospects.
Ally’s proposition is based on the brilliant insight that consumers hate the “mouse type” at the bottom of ads that pretty much make it impossible to take advantage of the offer that’s just been made. Airlines are notorious in this regard and banks aren’t much better. Ally is different because they’re “straightforward”, as the tag line declares. Ally drives this insight home in a recent ad that can be seen on You Tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKdIKP1arF0
If the “no hassle because we’re different” positioning sounds familiar it’s because that’s how Saturn initially positioned itself. And just as Saturn could not sustain a strong brand because of GM, Ally might have similar difficulty escaping its lineage. Corporate parentage, in other words, is important.
Ally is owned by financial giant GMAC, not the kind of association one wants these days. Moreover, GMAC was until recently 100% owned by General Motors and is now 49% owned by GM and 51% owned by a private equity firm. The “G” and the “M” in GMAC’s name are, of course, a vestige of its corporate history.
The GMAC association might hurt the “straightforward” positioning because the relationship between GMAC and Ally is portrayed inconsistently. Deep in the Ally Web sit there is a note that the bank is “built on the foundation of GMAC Financial Services” – which makes the relationship sound at arms length – and the TV ads don’t connote the relationship at all. Conversely, on the GMAC home page Ally Bank is front and center as one of the giant’s 9 offerings.
This disconnect might diminish the brand proposition for four reasons.
First, Ally positioning arguably necessitates adhering to a higher degree of transparency - beyond straightforward products and toward transparent relationships. Second, consumers are hard wired today to look beyond what marketers say. One commentator, from Cambridge’s business school, noted that “the “spin”-aware 21st century consumer is proficient at examining brands and looking for discontinuities—discontinuities between the information that they have received from other sources, and the information that is embodied by the brand. The difference or similarity between the two pictures is one of the ways that today’s stakeholders judge responsibility and accountability”. Third, in a post-Citibank post-Madoff world where only a third of Americans trust banks**, putting all your cards on the table is just good business. Fourth, with 36% of American shoppers responding in recent JD Powers survey that “brand image” is the most important factor in choosing a bank, wouldn’t Ally want to make sure that their images was unassailable?
* De-emphasizing one’s corporate parentage is a common enough practice. Blue Moon Beer, for example, does not mention on its site that it’s owned by giant brewer MillerCoors while the corporate page of MillerCoors lists Blue Moon as one of its “craft” beers. But most people don’t hold beer brands to a higher standard just as a third of Americans don’t mistrust beer manufacturers.
