Imperial’s Marketing Strategy May Take On That Fast-Food Look

Can a financial institution market jumbo CDs the same way Burger King pitches Whoppers?

Yes, with a few modifications, according to Thomas C. Sawyer, a former Burger King marketing executive who recently joined San Diego-based Imperial Corp. of America, parent company of Imperial Savings, as senior vice president of marketing and communications services.

Designing campaigns that will attract customers to an S&L; involves “a more rational (thought) process” than the advertising and marketing that presses hungry consumers to hit Burger King for lunch, Sawyer acknowledged.

But Sawyer believes that basic advertising and marketing techniques and disciplines used in the extremely competitive fast-food industry will work in the increasingly competitive S&L; industry.

Banks and S&Ls; began turning to fast-food and packaged-goods marketing experts when financial service industry regulators allowed institutions to expand their “product menus,” according to Sawyer.

Fast Food Industry

The San Diego native was not initially inclined to join ICA. He decided to leave the fast-food industry only after talking to former fast-food executives who had successfully made the switch to marketing jobs with financial institutions in San Francisco and New York. Before joining Miami-based Burger King, Sawyer was national franchise marketing director for Kentucky Fried Chicken Inc.

Sawyer, who has no financial background, hopes to attract customers to ICA’s branch offices by relying on “marketing instincts” that were honed by 20 years in the fast-food industry.

ICA’s far-flung operation, totaling 159 branches in three states, demands a marketing touch that is remarkably similar to the fast-food industry, according to ICA Chairman Kenneth Thygerson, who also hired ICA’s human resources and finance officers from the food industry.

“The retail fast-food business is way ahead of traditional banking” when it comes to marketing, said Thygerson, who has been “looking for fresh new ideas to further our retail operations.”

Sawyer will encourage branch managers to become involved in the marketing planning because “like the fast-food industry, the branch managers are the real experts about what their local customers want.”

Experiments Planned

The marketing executive who once designed campaigns that featured price breaks on hamburgers wants to experiment with discount programs that offer special rates. And, instead of “giving the customer a free glass with the drink, we’ll be looking for some value-added programs with (ICA’s) products.”

A Madison Avenue account executive who worked with Sawyer on Burger King campaigns described Sawyer as having “a working knowledge of franchise marketing. And (franchise marketing) is one of the biggest business trends in industry today.”

Sawyer, who has spent the last two months visiting ICA’s branch operations in California, Colorado and Kansas, will spend part of May working in a branch office. He then plans on “crashing about . . . (making) all kinds of marketing suggestions” designed to bring consumers into ICA’s branch offices.

“We’ll make a lot of mistakes,” Sawyer predicted, “but we’ll be paying extremely close attention to the return on investment for each product we offer. We’ll know in a year if we’ve been successful or not.”

Turning marketing and advertising over to executives who are more at home on Madison Avenue than Wall Street is a trend that will spread along with deregulation of the financial services industry, according to Home Federal S&L; First Vice President Bill N. Kinter, who believes successful S&Ls; must learn to market products “the same way you market soap, shampoo or anything else.”

S&Ls; can “apply the same disciplines that are that are used in package goods or fast food,” according to Kinter, who once hired a “brand product manager who handled cat food and cocoa mix.”

Sawyer will borrow heavily from product management techniques he once used to introduce a new meal or pump new life into a Burger King product with flagging sales.

Future S&L; marketing campaigns in California could grow to resemble the aggressive advertising styles used by the fast-food industry. One Florida S&L;’s advertising campaign already makes direct references to its competitors, Sawyer said.

Sawyer does not see image advertising, long a mainstay of the S&L; industry, playing an important role in his campaign to spread awareness of ICA.

“I’ve got no interest in the ‘invest with us because we’re big and powerful’ image campaign,” Sawyer said. “We’re going to hopefully do some advertising with some teeth in it.”