To define oneself in a largely undifferentiated market, a 100-year-old finance company no one's ever heard of needs more than just a dash of ingenuity and brand savvy. It requires confidence and boldness.
CIT, a provider of commercial and consumer finance products and services, may have tapped all those strengths with its new global branding campaign, which is being rolled out in three waves over newspaper, magazine, radio, Internet advertising and at networking events this year. The campaign's cornerstone is the firm's "capital redefined" equation: Relationship capital + intellectual capital + financial capital = capital redefined. "Capital redefined is based on what we do best-deliver relationship capital, intellectual capital and financial capital to our customers," notes CIT chairman and CEO Jeffrey M. Peek in a press statement. "We know the middle market and understand that our customers expect more than just traditional financing. This campaign highlights our unique go-to-market strategy and reflects our right heritage and strong competitive position in the middle market."
The copy-intensive ads differentiate the firm in a crowded marketplace. "A Pie Chart Can't Tell You What a Stroke of Genius is Worth," notes one headline. The paragraph below reads: "How do you quantify something that's never been done? When CIT evaluates potential, we think of all the airplanes, telephones, computers and contact lenses the world would be without if someone wasn't given the support they deserved. The fact is, even as a financial institution, we look beyond numbers and focus on the ideas, people and potential in a company. Then we provide the kind of ingenuity and long-term commitment that's helped our clients succeed for our 100-year history." Three similar full-page ads follow, with the headlines of "It's Time Potential Became a Line on a Balance Sheet" and "For those Who Rely on Financial Capital Alone, Here's What You're Missing." The tagline, "Capital redefined," accompanies all ads.
The hands-down best of the lot is the so-called "profitability analysis" ad for Dark Castle Entertainment, a sort of customer profile. "White-Knuckle, Edge-of-Your-Seat, Spill-the-Popcorn Profit," tops the image of an enormous eyeball, segmented like a pie chart into production costs, marketing costs, participations/residuals, and cult following. The graph bellows says, "Numbers never tell the whole story. Which is why CIT looked at Joel Silver and focused on his ability to turn out profitable films like "Gothica" and "Romeo Must Die," and blockbuster franchises like "Lethal Weapon," "Die Hard" and "The Matrix Trilogy." To help maintain his streak, we structured and underwrote $220 million in financing-a deal that gave him empowerment to greenlight his own projects and maintain ownership over his films through Dark Castle Entertainment. How did we do it? By bringing together a group of true, movie-savvy financial backers who saw the same potential in Dark Castle that we did. The fact is, that's our specialty at CIT, seeing potential and creating partnerships, relationships and customized financial solutions that ensure success." The ad ends by listing the firm's businesses: corporate, transportation, trade and vendor finance, and consumer and small-business lending.
"What makes us different is that we look beyond the numbers to provide intellectual and personal capital," explains Teri James, director of brand management at CIT, who says the campaign wanted to explain itself to the market, to engage its employees worldwide and to connect with its external audiences.
"The visual impact has to have a lot of value," says Jonathan Bond, CEO of Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, which designed the campaign in two months. "This was a good example of alignment of the company's internal and external goals." On track for 2008 are more profiles, featured in Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. Through December, 15-second spots are running during "The McLaughlin Group."
"It's a very cool campaign, definitely a smart campaign for the category," says Tom Merrick, chief creative officer of Mark Russell and Associates, an advertising firm in Syracuse, NY. "You rarely see a company take a stand like that. I like that they're out on a ledge when they say that it's about more than just money, it's about your drive, potential and ideas." He, too, found the eyeball ad compelling. "It is very powerful," he says. "The visual approach is killer, and head and shoulders above the others. This has power and punch to it. The headline was really great, too. It totally defined for me what 'capital redefined' is." (c) 2007 U.S. Banker and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.us-banker.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
