Here's an unusual way to capture the attention of potential customers: Advertise without mentioning your bank's name.
That's what HomeStreet Bank in Seattle did for two weeks last month with a billboard and radio campaign aimed at business customers.
Capitalizing on the growing popularity of Web logs, or blogs, HomeStreet set up an anonymous one called www.mybankdoesntgetit.com and ran ads encouraging people fed up with their banks to log on and vent.
After two weeks and thousands of hits, the $2 billion-asset thrift revealed itself on the site, inviting users to "click here for a bank that gets it." The link takes them to a new Web site, www.homestreetgetsit.com, which lists the thrift's products for business and personal banking.
On May 1, HomeStreet also started running newspaper, billboard, and radio ads pointing business owners to homestreetgetsit.com.
Richard Bendix, the thrift's director of marketing, said it is too soon to tell if the campaign is working, but the Web sites have certainly created a buzz. The campaign has been mentioned on a number of blogs, Mr. Bendix said, and a Tacoma business paper began soliciting stories about readers' best and worst business banking experiences. (It published some of them Friday.)
HomeStreet, formed in 1921, has been known primarily as a mortgage lender. It has struggled to get out the message that it also offers commercial loans, cash management services, and other products for businesses.
Mr. Bendix said the idea of launching an ad campaign with a blog emerged from focus-group discussions with business owners. Many banks were vying for their business, they said, but none of them could remember any of the ads.
"They told us that all of the bank ads tended to be the same - 'We give high-touch service,' " Mr. Bendix said. "We wanted to break through the clutter and stand out."
HomeStreet's ads targeting business owners will run through Nov. 30; the Web sites will be up indefinitely.
Radio spots that began airing in April tell listeners unhappy with a bank's service to log on to www.mybankdoesntgetit.com and "tell us your story." On the same day the Web site address - and nothing more - appeared on mobile billboards, signs on buses and at bus stops, and clusters of posters plastered on old buildings and construction sites.
The blog has received 7,000 hits and more than 70 postings of complaints. The complaints tell of merchant-only teller windows closed during peak hours; of banks charging fees for depositing "too much cash"; and of a teller who refused to let a well-known longtime customer whose wallet had been stolen withdraw emergency cash - because the customer had no ID.
Jim Copacino, a co-founder of Copacino & Fujikado LLC, the Seattle advertising firm that developed the campaign, said the Web site aims to tap into a "subversive" counterculture mentality.
"Good blogs have a grassroots appeal, where people can 'fight city hall,' " Mr. Copacino said. HomeStreet's Web site "taps into their true feelings." That makes the site a powerful advertising tool, "because it's the market telling us how they feel, rather than us telling them how they should feel," he said.
One posting on HomeStreet's Web site discussed problems someone had after opening a home equity line of credit at a large bank. The bank had told the customer that interest payments on the credit line would be lowered if the customer opened a checking account that the bank could automatically debit for the monthly payment.
The customer paid off the loan and closed the checking account about a year later but then began to receive overdraft-fee notices in the mail, because the bank continued to debit the account, which it bank had not recorded as closed.
A call to the bank's "800" number got instructions from a call center employee to dial a different "800" number, for the loan department. A loan-department employee said it was not their problem and told the customer to call back the first "800" number and "do a better job of explaining."
Eventually the customer was told the problem was fixed - but an overdraft notice arrived the next month. After three more months of calls, the bank finally mailed verification that it had actually closed the account.
"This is a great example of a bank that just didn't get it," Mr. Bendix said.
Even a competitor is using HomeStreet's campaign to its advantage.
Two disgruntled bank customers who posted complaints on the HomeStreet site said they were so frustrated with their banks' service that they moved their accounts to credit unions.
That prompted Joseph W. Veneziani, the president and chief executive of the $231 million-asset Group Health Credit Union in Seattle, to write a letter to the editor in a local paper about how credit unions "get it."
