Here’s another comment on marketing. I’m no expert on this stuff. There may be some psychological things that are being exploited here. It may be that these advertising campaigns are actually very effective. The recent Citibank campaign, for example. There are billboards all over with these quaint little messages saying that money isn’t everything. “Time is money” is an insult to time “collecting interest doesn’t count as a hobby” and stuff like that. I assume that the idea here is to say how sensitive and mushy the people over there at Citibank are. I have one problem with this. They are still a bank. They want business as a bank. They don’t put bunch of fucking billboards up in order to make friends right? They are basically saying “we would like you to bank with us”. And by “bank with us” I mean “give us money”. Because that is what goes on at a bank. You give them money in exchange for the promise that you can have it back when you need it. This is not news. People know how banks work. Now me, I don’t much care how well the bank likes or understand me as a person because that really doesn’t matter. All I care about is can they take good care of my money? I’m looking for a bank that does nothing but money. I want adds like this:

We eat sleep and breathe money.
We shit investments.
Talking about basis points arouses us.
Our hobby is collecting interest.
We get a warm fuzzy feeling from successful risk management.

Yes people like this would be boring to hang out with. But I don’t want to hang out with them. I just want them to watch my money. I want them to take care of it with that same wide-eyed kind of adoration that a kindergarten teacher should have for kids. I just don’t understand. Why oh why do you set up an add campaign based on downplaying the very thing that you are supposed to specialize in? If UPS ran a series of adds about how getting packages really isn’t so great, I don’t know about you but I would fucking well FedEx it. So someone tell me why they would ever go to a bank that publicly says money isn’t important.