Since Anne Finucane became the chief marketing officer at Bank of America two years ago, the institution has truly lived up to its name. With the acquisitions of U.S. Trust, Countrywide and LaSalle Bank - and of course the acquisition of FleetBoston Financial Corp. in 2004, which brought Finucane to BofA - the bank's footprint is literally a map of the United States.That tremendous growth, though, also meant that the $1.7 trillion-asset bank needed a new brand. Finucane put her fingerprint on the bank in February of 2007 as the originator of its "Bank of Opportunity" positioning, BofA's first new campaign since 2003's "Higher Standards" campaign. "Creating the idea of being the bank of opportunity, because of our geography, our product offering, our ability to anticipate your needs and then creating products and services," Finucane says, "that, in aggregate, creates opportunities for our customers."
The campaign has been wildly successful. BrandZ's annual Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking listed BofA as the top financial brand and 14th overall, listing the brand value at $33.1 billion, nearly $3 billion ahead of Citi. That's an increase of 15 percent from 2007. While managing a $2.3 billion marketing budget, unaided brand awareness increased three percent in the second quarter of this year over last and customer consideration is up six percent in that time. Through the first quarter of the year, deposit consideration is up two percent over the fourth quarter of 2007. In addition, BofA's new IRA marketing campaign has increased unaided awareness of BofA as a provider of IRAs among the mass affluent five percent since the campaign started running in February. As a whole, BofA surprised analysts by posting better-then-expected second quarter profits of $3.4 billion.
To go along with brand building, Finucane is the head of public policy and chairs the bank's Charitable Foundation, which gives over $200 million a year. In these tough times, this takes on greater importance for not only brand building, but it's good for business, too. "We are making sure that we are giving in our communities so that we are helping to give a lift to that community and create vibrancy," she says. "And this is of course enlightened self interest. If a community is vibrant, then the business is better and we do better." (c) 2008 U.S. Banker and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.americanbanker.com/usb.html/ http://www.sourcemedia.com/
