And to think I called bank advertising clueless…

The ad world is all agog today about a new ad from HSBC in the UK that involves bears, hippies, cops and what looks like an obscenely big budget. Most of the advertising blogs I read love the ad and say (I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s engaging, makes you think, brings a tear to your eye, and so on.

As a consumer (the target audience for the ad if I still lived in the UK) I have a differing opinion.

But first, watch the ad:

<rant> Yes, the ad is engaging and makes me think. It makes me think WTF are they on about - a bunch of hippies are sitting in trees, then the cops come and smash them and arrest them, then lumberjacks cut down the forrest, then the head hippy storms off on a motorbike and… HSBC have good credit cards?? Seriously, what in the name of god were they thinking? </rant>

“What we learn from one customer helps another”… by chopping down the trees? Or putting on the bear suit? Or was it the motorbike and letting the bloke drive? Or was it the lady with the ugly baby? My brain is hurting so much from trying to understand what the hell they are on about and why I should switch my accounts to them.

All I want is a bank account that doesn’t charge me fees, a credit card that stops when it hits my limit (instead of going over and then charging me an overlimit fee - c’mon, zero means zero) and maybe one day a mortgage that doesn’t make me want to cry every day for 30 years.

I still don’t understand if they are on the side of the lumberjacks or the hippies. I assume the hippies as they made them all good-looking.

UPDATE : ohhhhhh apparently according to advertising experts -

Following the drama between a couple, one a lumberjack, the other a tree hugger, the commercial dramatizes the couple’s differing beliefs and they struggle through a protest. Dividing as the issue can be, at the end of the day, they manage to go home loving one another.

Oh really? Really. A hippy sits in a tree for 3 days, then her husband the lumberjack (pfttt you couldn’t pitch this in hollywood) rips her out, roughs her up a little, gets her arrested, chops down her favourite forrest and THEN she gets on a motorbike with him and goes home and gives him some sweet lovin’?

Oh my dear god, HSBC marketing people are in worse shape than I thought! Have they ever met another human being?

This post is tagged under: Marketing