La new advertising campaign by CheBanca!, on air these days (watch the video at the end of the article), arouses a couple of reflections. The first concerns the company's message and therefore its strategic positioning. The direct bank of the Mediobanca group, in fact, he had accustomed us to a very pop tone: commercials inspired by musicals, with ballets, majorettes, songs and money flying everywhere. A language chosen with good reason – the management comes from the great success of Conto Arancio – in all probability allo intended to appeal to a broad audience (the breakeven of the initiative requires large numbers), not very sensitive to sophisticated financial reasoning.
Now, suddenly, the swerve: in the new campaign – created by the new agency, Dlv Bbdo, which takes over from Casiraghi & Greco – the tone becomes reflective and draws on completely different themes (the construction of a secure future), interpreted by the warm voice of the dubber Luca Ward. Hence the first question: can a brand, from any sector, but even more so in a delicate area such as household savings, change its message so drastically and even more so its tone of voice? It is as if our old good-time friend, the one who always begins with a joke, rang the doorbell and, at our first wisecrack drawn from the common high school repertoire, answered seriously: "What is the meaning of life?". “Are you okay?” we would ask him.
If the first point is entirely internal and concerns the relationship between CheBanca! and its audience, the second is more important and calls into question the world of asset management and - consequently - Italian banks. Let's listen to the commercial: “…because we know that what you bring to us are not just your savings, but… they are the house with a garden you dream of buying to fill it with flowers and friends for the whole summer, or the university of Boys". Surprise. A deposit account – typically a cash management tool – breaks into the asset management category, with arguments that are typical of asset management: the enhancement of long-term savings, with quasi-pension purposes. The move is interesting, especially at a time when a remodeling of welfare is underway, with an expected decrease in public pensions and the consequent need to increase recourse to private ones.
The attempt is legitimate. If anything, CheBanca! will have the problem of keeping the promise in the future, perhaps in contexts of rates different from the current one (with yields at 2% you pay for university for your children?), but - again - it is a “private” matter. What is most striking today is how this overspill occurs without encountering resistance: in other words, thanks to the total silence of the major asset managers and their shareholders (the banks). Agreed that the market is going badly, agreed that the banks have a thousand problems, from capitalization to Greek bonds, agreed that between listings, mergers and sales announced and repeatedly denied, the greatest uncertainty reigns over the fate of the major companies asset management companies. All right. But what an entire industrial sector that is nothing short of strategic (since it should deal with savings and therefore with the future well-being of a few million Italians) I haven't been able to utter a word for years, to indicate a strategy, to educate savers to invest regardless of the performance of the Stock Exchanges, in short, to regain possession of their role as the engine of development and well-being, can not worry.
Se Italian banks they think that asset management is not important, that the hundreds of billions of euros under management (the top three groups in the country manage 450 billion, equal to 50% of the Italian total!) are a useless burden, that the promises to build assets for the future by investing wisely and anti-cyclically in funds diversified by geographical area and asset class were a joke, they say it. Conversely, let them make their voices heard, dialogue with citizen-savers. Always, not just when there is a possible stock market placement on the horizon. Otherwise confusion and distrust will only increase, to the detriment of all.
