Marketing can look silly

A letter to the Times reads:
I have just received my new year edition of the Royal Bank of Scotland's magazine. It is called Sense, and it tells me that "it's more important than ever to be in control of your finances". I am a shareholder. Words fail me. - Julia Mills, Bedford

Marketing can look silly sometimes, but is it? What could RBS have put in their magazine? Would many people less erudite than Julia Mills actually benefit from this advice. Should the RBS people be publishing a magazine at all? Or were they caught out by long production and distribution time lines?

Probably, they've only really been pariahs for a matter of weeks (although you might have thought someone pre-press would have winced slightly on a read through).

One thing that could have helped would be to find a 'voice' for the magazine that isn't so direct-from-brand, the 'voice' being a place from which this advice could come that would not be so patronising and therefore galling in this instance.

Public service advertising has cracked this in the last few years - the 'voice' that speaks to us in those appallingly effective ads about crumpled children and gluey veins is not so much the government, to whom we might prickle at the interference, but is much more like our conscience and so avoids the problem.

I'm afraid the 'prickle' with Sense is also another example of the very broad tar-brush that so called bankers are getting slapped with these days, most of which should be reserved for the 1% of so called 'market-makers' that shattered 80% of the assets - and the government, who very tacitly not only let them do it, but encouraged it.