BankBoston Moves All Its Advertising to One Agency

In a move to create a unified brand image, BankBoston Corp. said it has consolidated its U.S. advertising business with one agency.

The business, with an estimated $25 million in annual billings, had been split between Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc. and a rival Boston firm, Mullen Advertising. Hill Holliday will now control the entire advertising account of the $69 billion-asset bank.

BankBoston executives said the move will help create "one voice" in advertisements.

"We wanted to make sure that everything we do, from the promise to the delivery, is a consistent message," said Karen Green, BankBoston's executive director of marketing. With branding becoming an increasingly important goal of marketing efforts, the selection of a single agency to create broad-based campaigns made sense, image consultants said.

"Banks are not advertising the way they did 10 years ago," said Brannon Cashion of Addison Whitney Inc., a corporate identity consulting firm in Charlotte, N.C. "They have to try and promote their brand and their identity to an increasingly national audience."

Citicorp caused a big stir on Madison Avenue last August when it announced it was terminating three agencies it had worked with for decades and consolidated its business with Young & Rubicam Inc. In 1996 BankBoston ranked eighth in spending on bank advertising, according to Competitive Media Reporting. That year the Boston bank spent $17.9 million on a variety of media. During the first nine months of 1997 its ad spending totaled $11.3 million, and it fell to 10th.

Banks have been changing their marketing tactics to focus on branding issues because of market pressure, consultants said.

"As the lines in financial services blur, banks are being forced to define themselves more broadly," said Allen Adamson, managing director of San Francisco-based Landor Associates.

Hill Holliday, which also does advertising for such companies as the golf equipment maker Top Flite and the insurer John Hancock, was BankBoston Corp.'s agency before its 1996 merger with BayBanks Inc. Mullen was the agency for BayBanks.

After the banks merged, Hill Holliday created ads for corporate banking, and Mullen handled retail and small-business campaigns.

A variety of local agencies handle BankBoston's advertising overseas, Ms. Green said.

Ms. Green said the consolidation with Hill Holliday is consistent with a reengineering project that aims, in part, to improve the bank's product set and customer service.

Ms. Green said major changes in the bank's advertising strategy will not be immediate.

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