The image is a smug looking woman in a shiny green jacket and a bowler hat. The line says something about ‘easy money’. The bowler is a reference to ‘Mr Bradford & Mr Bingley’ (presumably, she’s their niece) and the timing is awful. The last thing that’s easy at B&B at the moment is money and probably the last place that anyone is going to pitch up with their hard earned savings is their local Bradford & Bingley branch. Yet the posters hang apologetically all over town, counting down the days until some other invitation to 'eat food' or 'drink beer' gets slapped up in their place.A quick look at bradford-bingley.co.uk confirms business as usual. There’s a welcoming invitation to ‘Become one of the UK’s top interest earners. With your eyes closed.’ Which suggests that B&B’s grip on English grammar is as tenuous as its very existence on the High Street of the future and it’s only when you click on an innocuous looking button on the right hand side of the page marked ‘B&B Rights Issue’ that there’s even the faintest sense of the turmoil that currently grips the company. You can ‘Rest assured when you save with Bradford & Bingley’ it says on their home page but I’m not so sure. In tough times like these is it our job as marketers to tell the truth or sell the stuff? Is there time to step back and pause for thought or do we just carry on regardless, throw open the doors and declare ‘business as usual’ until the man arrives with the padlock and chain? I guess, as ever, we’ll take what we can get and deal with the consequences at a later date. It’s just business, as usual.
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Alan Munro
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 01 Sep 2009
Total Posts: 125
