How to buy a bank?
Zurich agencies promote stock market launches of the St.Gallen and Lucerne cantonal banks
Zurich agencies promote the IPOs of the St.Gallen and Lucerne cantonal banksBy Luca Aloisi 11 out of 24 cantonal banks (CBs) are listed on the Swiss stock exchange. Shortly after the Secondary Public Offering (SPO) of the Lucerne KB, the St.Gallen KB is now joining them. Suter Global Communication and Peter Bütikofer & Company made two different appearances to promote the partial privatization. With mixed results.
When the Zürcher Kantonalbank recently made negative headlines because of its bonus payments to the - exclusively politically elected - members of the Bank Council, the controversy was again used as an impetus to privatize the financial institution.
Public limited companies run purely under private law are a minority among the cantonal banks. Not for much longer, Hanspeter Hess, spokesman for the Association of Cantonal Banks, is convinced. This is because Berner KB, probably the first KB to draw national attention to the change in its legal form, has recently been joined by Luzerner KB (LUKB).
In contrast to the former, however, it was not LUKB's financial difficulties that led it to take this step. Rather, there were other reasons for opening up: easing the burden on the canton, greater customer loyalty through greater flexibility, increased trading opportunities with swap or cross-shareholdings in other public limited companies and structural change in the banking sector.
LUKB is currently not alone in going public. St.Galler KB (SGKB) also transformed itself into a similar form of company - a mixed-economy public limited company - just over a year ago and is now about to go public. Naturally, this will not happen without a great deal of advertising and PR support. After all, customers have to be
and above all
investors are attracted. This is because they must be able to live with the fact that, despite the new ownership structure, they will not be able to shake the canton's voting majority.
The anniversary year helped,
to strengthen the LUKB image
In 1999, the government council, as the largest shareholder, presented its partial privatization plans for LUKB in the consultation process. As a result, the go-ahead was given on March 12 for the retroactive conversion into an AG. As many Lucerne residents as possible were to become shareholders in the cantonal bank, as the bank not only wants to be anchored in the region through its business connections, but also through its ownership structure.
The narrow outcome of the referendum on partial privatization, which coincided with the bank's 150th anniversary last September, did not put those responsible off. "We felt that we had strong roots in Lucerne," says Daniel von Arx, Head of PR at LUKB, today.
"The aim was to win over the people of Lucerne as shareholders and convince the critics of the partial privatization," recalls Markus Schär, concept developer and consultant at the Zurich agency Suter Global Communications (SGC). The anniversary campaign with the new slogan "My bank - just right" laid a good foundation for this, as it fulfilled the sustainable positioning function for the identity process.
Even before the share placement, the PS share price, which rose by 15 percent, showed that the mood had indeed changed. Von Arx also attributes this success to LUKB's already good image capital and high share of mind. This grew even more with the proud anniversary presence in the media. Neither the bank nor its business policy were targeted by critics. Von Arx is convinced that "basically the two poles in the run-up to the vote did not differ in their goal, but in the way to get there". While he noted a latent fear among the opponents that LUKB would no longer be as good as before after partial privatization, the proponents hoped for an even better bank. The best starting position for the SPO public campaign.
Testimonials stand for the
LUKB's ancient roots
The placement was primarily intended for the home market, because that is where the emotional closeness is greatest. Hence the local color of the testimonial campaign, which ran in the Lucerne area with unknown Lucerne residents and five local business celebrities such as Trisa owner Ernst Pfenniger and Emmi CEO Fritz Wyss.
The umbrella slogan "My bank - just right" launched last year, which initially ran with the leitmotif "150 years with the people" as a baseline, was replaced for the SPO. With the target group in mind, the slogan "My bank" was reinforced with the ironic pun "I'm buying my bank": who has enough money to buy a bank? The leitmotif "Just right for my portfolio", updated for the share placement, implied the message for investors that is particularly important today: LUKB is a solid value with good future potential.
Typical city symbols as eye-catchers for equity investors
For financial analysts and institutional investors, the SGC creatives declined the same message in two national subjects by building a symbolic bridge between value and growth. Unfortunately, the visual realization of the idea lags behind. For example, the Kappelbrücke as a connecting element between a piano keyboard - music festival - and a PC keyboard or the Willisauer Ringli and CD-Roms comes across as rather old-fashioned and crooked. "There aren't many Swiss cities that can be localized by outsiders through branded articles or buildings like with these precisely positioned codes," Daniel von Arx defends the approach.
It is obvious that the financial institution wants to draw the attention of its clientele - including foreign private banking clients - to its own shares, especially with the qualities and tourist appeal of Lucerne.
Code transfer as cumbersome as the thick-skinned key visual
The agency Peter Bütikofer & Company took a completely different approach for the IPO of St.Galler Kantonalbank (SGKB) with an elephant as the key visual. But despite the uniqueness bonus, this also caused some head-shaking. First of all, local professional artists were invited to design 40 plastic elephants.
It was not the advertising medium that annoyed the artists, but the fact that they should have done their work free of charge. School classes stepped in as the lucky stopgaps, painting the "Easter animals" as part of a competition and seeing their creations displayed in front of SGKB branches from the IPO onwards.
However, the event is just a small piece of the mosaic in the large-scale advertising campaign that began months ago when the bank underwent a change in strategy with a view to partial privatization. Following the efficiency-boosting rationalization and reorganization, new structures and streamlining of the offering, SGKB had pitches made to communicate the change in strategy and spin-off of the private banking unit (St.Gallen Wealth Advisory) as well as the IPO on the banking and market side.
The Zurich pitch winner Bütikofer & Company created an independent image that reflects the new direction and has now achieved a high level of penetration with a considerable presence on all advertising channels, including green elephant tracks on sidewalks, an online game and several events.
Since the teaser campaign last fall, green elephants have been the main visual in the communication. The pachyderms were intended to underline the bank's positive values such as local roots and solidity, but also to counteract prejudices. "Many people don't believe that the bank is flexible and dynamic," says project manager Guido Müller von Bütikofer.
An intelligent elephant surrounded by bulls and bears
To capture this emotionally, the decision was made to use the elephant as an attention-getter and messenger of advertising attributes such as powerful, intelligent, attentive, agile and sensitive. The questionable semantic balancing act was not understood by everyone, as some marketing people in Eastern Switzerland point out.
Despite critical voices, the strategists seem to have lucked out with their visualization. In the current environment of uncertainty on the trading floors, the elephant as a symbol of the inexpensive value stock, according to Bank Sarasin, looks like a cynical answer - the only correct one - to the two mood animals of the stock market. Alongside bulls and bears, the likeable trunked animal cuts the best figure.
When the Zürcher Kantonalbank recently made negative headlines because of its bonus payments to the - exclusively politically elected - members of the Bank Council, the controversy was again used as an impetus to privatize the financial institution.
Public limited companies run purely under private law are a minority among the cantonal banks. Not for much longer, Hanspeter Hess, spokesman for the Association of Cantonal Banks, is convinced. This is because Berner KB, probably the first KB to draw national attention to the change in its legal form, has recently been joined by Luzerner KB (LUKB).
In contrast to the former, however, it was not LUKB's financial difficulties that led it to take this step. Rather, there were other reasons for opening up: easing the burden on the canton, greater customer loyalty through greater flexibility, increased trading opportunities with swap or cross-shareholdings in other public limited companies and structural change in the banking sector.
LUKB is currently not alone in going public. St.Galler KB (SGKB) also transformed itself into a similar form of company - a mixed-economy public limited company - just over a year ago and is now about to go public. Naturally, this will not happen without a great deal of advertising and PR support. After all, customers have to be
and above all
investors are attracted. This is because they must be able to live with the fact that, despite the new ownership structure, they will not be able to shake the canton's voting majority.
The anniversary year helped,
to strengthen the LUKB image
In 1999, the government council, as the largest shareholder, presented its partial privatization plans for LUKB in the consultation process. As a result, the go-ahead was given on March 12 for the retroactive conversion into an AG. As many Lucerne residents as possible were to become shareholders in the cantonal bank, as the bank not only wants to be anchored in the region through its business connections, but also through its ownership structure.
The narrow outcome of the referendum on partial privatization, which coincided with the bank's 150th anniversary last September, did not put those responsible off. "We felt that we had strong roots in Lucerne," says Daniel von Arx, Head of PR at LUKB, today.
"The aim was to win over the people of Lucerne as shareholders and convince the critics of the partial privatization," recalls Markus Schär, concept developer and consultant at the Zurich agency Suter Global Communications (SGC). The anniversary campaign with the new slogan "My bank - just right" laid a good foundation for this, as it fulfilled the sustainable positioning function for the identity process.
Even before the share placement, the PS share price, which rose by 15 percent, showed that the mood had indeed changed. Von Arx also attributes this success to LUKB's already good image capital and high share of mind. This grew even more with the proud anniversary presence in the media. Neither the bank nor its business policy were targeted by critics. Von Arx is convinced that "basically the two poles in the run-up to the vote did not differ in their goal, but in the way to get there". While he noted a latent fear among the opponents that LUKB would no longer be as good as before after partial privatization, the proponents hoped for an even better bank. The best starting position for the SPO public campaign.
Testimonials stand for the
LUKB's ancient roots
The placement was primarily intended for the home market, because that is where the emotional closeness is greatest. Hence the local color of the testimonial campaign, which ran in the Lucerne area with unknown Lucerne residents and five local business celebrities such as Trisa owner Ernst Pfenniger and Emmi CEO Fritz Wyss.
The umbrella slogan "My bank - just right" launched last year, which initially ran with the leitmotif "150 years with the people" as a baseline, was replaced for the SPO. With the target group in mind, the slogan "My bank" was reinforced with the ironic pun "I'm buying my bank": who has enough money to buy a bank? The leitmotif "Just right for my portfolio", updated for the share placement, implied the message for investors that is particularly important today: LUKB is a solid value with good future potential.
Typical city symbols as eye-catchers for equity investors
For financial analysts and institutional investors, the SGC creatives declined the same message in two national subjects by building a symbolic bridge between value and growth. Unfortunately, the visual realization of the idea lags behind. For example, the Kappelbrücke as a connecting element between a piano keyboard - music festival - and a PC keyboard or the Willisauer Ringli and CD-Roms comes across as rather old-fashioned and crooked. "There aren't many Swiss cities that can be localized by outsiders through branded articles or buildings like with these precisely positioned codes," Daniel von Arx defends the approach.
It is obvious that the financial institution wants to draw the attention of its clientele - including foreign private banking clients - to its own shares, especially with the qualities and tourist appeal of Lucerne.
Code transfer as cumbersome as the thick-skinned key visual
The agency Peter Bütikofer & Company took a completely different approach for the IPO of St.Galler Kantonalbank (SGKB) with an elephant as the key visual. But despite the uniqueness bonus, this also caused some head-shaking. First of all, local professional artists were invited to design 40 plastic elephants.
It was not the advertising medium that annoyed the artists, but the fact that they should have done their work free of charge. School classes stepped in as the lucky stopgaps, painting the "Easter animals" as part of a competition and seeing their creations displayed in front of SGKB branches from the IPO onwards.
However, the event is just a small piece of the mosaic in the large-scale advertising campaign that began months ago when the bank underwent a change in strategy with a view to partial privatization. Following the efficiency-boosting rationalization and reorganization, new structures and streamlining of the offering, SGKB had pitches made to communicate the change in strategy and spin-off of the private banking unit (St.Gallen Wealth Advisory) as well as the IPO on the banking and market side.
The Zurich pitch winner Bütikofer & Company created an independent image that reflects the new direction and has now achieved a high level of penetration with a considerable presence on all advertising channels, including green elephant tracks on sidewalks, an online game and several events.
Since the teaser campaign last fall, green elephants have been the main visual in the communication. The pachyderms were intended to underline the bank's positive values such as local roots and solidity, but also to counteract prejudices. "Many people don't believe that the bank is flexible and dynamic," says project manager Guido Müller von Bütikofer.
An intelligent elephant surrounded by bulls and bears
To capture this emotionally, the decision was made to use the elephant as an attention-getter and messenger of advertising attributes such as powerful, intelligent, attentive, agile and sensitive. The questionable semantic balancing act was not understood by everyone, as some marketing people in Eastern Switzerland point out.
Despite critical voices, the strategists seem to have lucked out with their visualization. In the current environment of uncertainty on the trading floors, the elephant as a symbol of the inexpensive value stock, according to Bank Sarasin, looks like a cynical answer - the only correct one - to the two mood animals of the stock market. Alongside bulls and bears, the likeable trunked animal cuts the best figure.
