A Brilliant Brand Vision, Up in Smoke. Or, Who Says The Citi Never Sleeps

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A Brilliant Brand Vision, Up in Smoke. (Or, Who Says The Citi Never Sleeps?)

February 27th, 2008

One of the most difficult things to do today is to stake out some meaningful territory in the consumer’s brain, especially in a category that is bloated with “sameness.” That is why it is painful to watch a company that seemingly has “tapped into that vein” of finding a meaningful brand vision blithely walk away from it and ease itself back into the morass of safe, comfortable mediocrity.

The latest example of this is CitiBank. For several years now, CitBank’s ads have had an almost ethereal look and feel and were not about banking so much as they were about life. “Live richly” the ads proclaimed, with the message that you’ll enjoy life to the fullest only if you focus on the really important things. And worrying whether your CDs earns an extra .01% is not one of them. This positioning was brilliant. It not only gave CitiBank something different to say, it tapped into where people are in their lives. As far as a brand vision goes, you can’t do much more than that.

That said, Citi recently walked away from this approach to a more “banky” approach. Ick. It may have made the “bank-types” that run the place feel all nice and comfortable, but my guess is it totally misses with consumers.