vivid shining brands

“You should resign. You should give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated.” Ouch. Imagine if that was a public official leveling such a charge at you, the CEO of a heretofore well-respected financial services institution. Think of the damage done, not only to your personal reputation, but to the brand value of your company and the morale of your people. Yet this is exactly what John Stumpf, CEO of venerable Wells Fargo Bank, had to endure at the hands of Senator Elizabeth Warren this week. This Senate hearing came on the heels of a scandal in which bank employees, under reportedly intense pressure to cross-sell products to make their numbers, fraudulently opened new accounts for customers without their permission. To make matters worse, Stumpf appeared to blame the proverbial “few bad apples” for the trouble, although it appears as though the number of apples fired as a result was somewhere north of 5,000 and none of them, oddly...

From NYTimes.com : “Banks aren’t doing a good job at innovating for consumers,” said Robert Dighero, a partner in the London-based venture capital firm Passion Capital. “Start-ups are nibbling away at some of their most profitable businesses.” From FastCompany , Robert Anderson, Creative Director of the payment processing startup Square, notes: "Well frankly, this industry has been neglected for so long that even putting in a modest amount of thinking in terms of modern user experience makes this stuff way better," In the wake of some of the most inexcusable scandals, after significant fee increases during the worst recession since the great depression, after generous taxpayer bailouts were gobbled up by financial services companies without so much as a thank you,  (except for AIG, whose thank you almost became a f*** you) is it any wonder entrepreneurial Innovator Brands see the big brands as vulnerable? London’s fast-growing start-up scene is trying to dis...

Another banking scandal unfolds, courtesy of nytimes.com: The global bank   HSBC   has been used by Mexican drug cartels looking to get cash back into the United States, by Saudi Arabian banks that needed access to dollars despite their terrorist ties, and by Iranians who wanted to circumvent United States sanctions. What's astonishing, especially in light of the recent unapologetic testimony by bankers such as Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Barclay's Robert Diamond is this statement by the bank: The company said in a statement on Monday that “we will apologize, acknowledge these mistakes, answer for our actions and give our absolute commitment to fixing what went wrong.” But Senator Carl Levin, who leads the banking subcommittee, was not impressed.  “While the bank is saying all the right things, and that is fine, it has said all the right things before,” he said. Clearly, HSBC's brand is severely damaged in the eyes of the senator, but what about it'...

I picked up my New York Times Magazine today, and because I know that a huge part of branding is association, looked to see which advertiser had purchased the prestigious back cover of the liberal's equivalent of the Sunday reading of The Scripture. I didn't have to get it through the full 180 turn before the deep green, gold bar, and handsome photographic portrait tripped my brand wires: First Republic Bank, featuring the vaunted computer scientist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist (he's probably a nice guy, to boot), Peter Thiel. First Republic has it down. They didn't always have it down, as their ads used to look a little rough around the edges, and the photography did not always exemplify the highest production values. But the personalities/clients they featured were always topnotch. The 1% presented without irony, exuding confidence and intelligence. Good breeding quite optional (though success a requirement). Blue blood optional: A recen...