Washington Mutual Inc. will launch a national advertising campaign this week as it continues to tout its growing retail bank chain and distance itself from troubled mortgage businesses.
Genevieve Smith, Wamu's chief marketing officer, said the Seattle thrift company spent about four months helping its new advertising agency create ads that will appear in its branches, in print, online, and on radio and television.
"We see this as an opportunity to reinforce and engage" customers in "the culture of Wamu — a very unique, very human vibe," Ms. Smith said in an interview Tuesday.
Dino Tzouroutis, group creative director at the Woodbine Agency, said the $328 billion-asset Wamu needs to make its advertising click with prospective customers — the target audience for much of its advertising in 2007 — and reassure existing customers who may be concerned about Wamu's battered mortgage business that its bank operations are on solid ground.
Wamu also has to overcome a good amount of bank-advertising clutter, including recently launched campaigns from Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp.
If "you can't say anything different from the sea of other banks offering the same stuff and smiling employees, don't waste your money," said Mr. Tzouroutis, whose Winston-Salem, N.C., agency has worked on ad campaigns for Wachovia Corp. and other large financial companies.
In the television spots, customers shout "Whoo hoo!" over Wamu's efforts to "simplify banking," such as offering free identification theft protection and free ATM withdrawals with its checking accounts.
"It delivers a message that we're a bank that doesn't nickel-and-dime you," Ms. Smith said. One television commercial features a bald man who shouts "Whoo hoo!" as he learns about Wamu's free checking services and then dreams he is driving along an oceanfront in a new car and with a full had of hair.
TBWA\Chiat\Day of Los Angeles, the agency behind Apple Inc.'s iPod advertising, is the lead agency on the Washington Mutual campaign, a new partnership for Wamu, Ms. Smith said. The company was satisfied with former agencies, but as it shifted toward emphasizing the "Wamu experience" as opposed to advertising certain products and business lines, it needed an agency with "experience on comprehensive brand campaigns," she said.
Ms. Smith would not disclose the cost of the campaign but said Wamu's advertising budget would be about the same as last year. Wamu reported last month that it spent $444 million on advertising and promotion in 2007.
The campaign is not an explicit response to criticism of Wamu's mortgage business but is intended to allay any concerns current customers might have, Ms. Smith said. She said Wamu's retail operation is strong and poised for growth, and the company wants to convey that message. "You also do have to understand that your current customers are in the mix," she said.
Though the campaign is national in scope, Wamu will advertise on local television in key markets such as New York, Ms. Smith said.
Wamu's problems are woven deeply into the mortgage meltdown. The company posted a fourth-quarter loss of mortgage-related writedowns, and it forecasts a loan-loss provision of as much as $2 billion for this quarter alone. Analysts have said it might take a year for Wamu to get back in the black.
Kerry Killinger, Wamu's chairman and chief executive, has pinned its recovery hopes on its branch network, which it plans to expand in densely populated markets. It plans to build 100 to 150 retail branches primarily in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and in the Northwest and to add more than 1 million checking accounts this year, Mr. Killinger said in an interview last month.
"We are driving the company for much stronger profitability once we emerge from this challenging period," he said.
