The Homa Files

Have you seen any of the clever commercials promoting Ally Bank?

The ads show a con man  banker taking advantage of innocent children with the equivalent of typical bank practices (e.g. teaser offers, high service fees, misleading fine print).

My opinion: the campaign is very effective positioning Ally as a fair, customer-oriented bank.

Embarrassed to admit that I thought Ally was a new bank, or maybe an obscure one that I just hadn’t heard of …

Then today I picked up on an incidental mention in the WSJ:

Keeping GM alive, albeit in shrunken form, was an expensive undertaking for America’s taxpayers: about $65 billion in all, if one counts government aid to the company’s former financial arm, formerly GMAC, now renamed Ally Bank.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264641145227612.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

How did I miss that one ?

Below is a recap of the rebranding announcement.

Re-branding is usually done out of necessity.

Sometimes an acquiring company loses the right to use a brand name  — think GE household appliances to Black & Decker.

In those instances, you see references back to the old brand – think Brinks Home Security is now Broadview Security – to transfer some of the old brand equity to the new brand.

But, who would want to be associated with GMAC these days?

So, you see Ally signaling that it’s new from scratch with no references to its original branding.

Worked on me !

* * * * *

Excerpted from USA Today: GMAC Bank re-brands itself as Ally Bank, 5/15/2009

The banking arm of ailing auto finance company GMAC is taking on a new name, hoping to smooth its image and entice new customers as it works to drive deposit growth.

GMAC has since been trying to expand its consumer banking offerings to offset sharp declines in new vehicle loan and home mortgage originations.

GMAC Bank has become Ally Bank, which will offer a variety of savings products, including no-penalty certificates of deposits, online savings accounts and money market accounts.

“We are launching a new brand with a new approach of treating customers with total transparency.”

The company settled on the name Ally after extensive interviews with customers.

“The name Ally aptly fit the character of the brand”

The re-branding of the bank, a unit of GMAC Financial Services, is a clear effort to distance itself from its troubled parents, GM and GMAC. 

Full article:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2009-05-15-ally-gmac-bank_N.htm

This entry was posted on June 2, 2010 at 6:43 am and is filed under Mktg - Brands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.