Banking on the ‘50s : New Home Savings Ads Signal Shift in Thrifts’ Marketing Approach

Home Savings of America is using images from the ‘50s in an attempt to attract as customers the baby boomers who grew up on “I Love Lucy.”

In a break from its usual humdrum style, the nation’s largest savings and loan is airing light-hearted black-and-white commercials that hark back to the days of early TV. In one commercial, ice-skating tellers burst into song, while in another ad, crowns instantly appear atop customers’ heads.

“When we talked to people about banking, what we heard consistently is that they wanted good service,” said Tracy Britton, marketing vice president for Home Savings. “They remember a time when the customer was always right--the ‘50s.”

The whimsical approach reflects how competition for banking customers has changed. Only a decade ago, thrifts fought among themselves for the classic S&L; customer: older, conservative savers in their 50s and 60s. Today, thrifts, in order to grow, need to lure younger customers from brokerage houses and banks, which dominate the financial services business.

Endorsements from old-time celebrities, popular among S&Ls; in the 1980s, are giving way to quirky and irreverent advertising as once-stodgy savings institutions try to update their images. In doing so, some S&Ls; are taking aim at what they say is a frequent complaint about big banks--poor service.

Glendale Federal, for example, is running a series of commercials poking fun at its big bank competitors. In one ad, a manager at a big bank avoids a customer by ducking under his desk and disappearing through a trap door. Other commercials urge viewers to call GlenFed if they are “fed up” with their present bank.

By contrast, GlenFed commercials in the 1980s were gentler, featuring an endorsement from the late entertainer Dinah Shore.

“We took a close look at ourselves,” said Clark Collins, GlenFed’s senior vice president for retail marketing. “We realized it would take a different approach to reach consumers.”

At Home Savings, executives are hoping that a dose of ‘50s nostalgia will warm disenchanted bank customers raised on ‘50s re-runs to the thrift.

Home Savings’ Britton says the group the thrift is targeting--people in their 40s--tend to view Home Savings as “a little dusty and stuck in a rut.” The new commercials, she believes, grab viewers’ attention while giving the thrift a contemporary feel like “Nick at Night”--a cable program featuring old re-runs that is popular with teens.

The commercials also let Home Savings talk about what it considers its strength--customer service. The commercials make modest promises--such as to open the bank early when people are waiting--in a style reminiscent of old ads for cigarettes or headache remedies.

One commercial has Homer, an animated talking house that is a throwback to the Alka-Seltzer mascot, Speedy. Another spot features a wide-eyed TV family that would fit easily into “Father Knows Best.”

Fifties flourishes are turning up in Home Savings branches. Home Savings recently ran what it considers a successful checking account promotion that rewarded new customers with a four-piece set of Corning Ware, first sold in 1958. Home Savings is considering other ‘50s touches, such as giving mortgage customers a home-warming tin of cookies, or selling cardboard playhouses modeled after Homer.

Karal Ann Marling, a University of Minnesota art history professor and author of a book on early TV, says ‘50s iconography is seeping into the popular culture. One of the hottest items at flea markets, she says, are old TV commercials. New advertising using 1950s images can be effective with baby boomers who grew up during that decade, she said.

“It’s more than nostalgia,” Marling said. A 1950s theme, she said, “plays to a special knowledge” about America during the decade, making people who lived through the period “feel smart.”

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“That is a wonderful thing for an ad to do,” she said. “So much advertising makes us feel stupid.”

Britton, a former marketing executive at Rolling Stone magazine who joined Home Savings 18 months ago, says the cookware giveaway and other promotions are the first step toward making the transaction-oriented branches more inviting to consumers. Her goal: to become a Crate & Barrel of banking.

“I want people to think they may be missing something if they don’t stop in,” she said.

Home Savings had a big hand in creating the stodgy image it is now trying to shed. Much of its previous advertising stressed safety--a mantra that, while important to older savers, is less relevant with the passing of the S&L; crisis. (“No one has ever lost a penny at Home Savings,” was a slogan.)

“Among people who were not our customers, their awareness of Home Savings”--and its services--”was quite limited,” said Bonnie Baruch, account supervisor at Home Savings’ advertising agency, Chiat/Day.

In developing its new ads, Home Savings took steps to bring them into the ‘90s, lest the ads reinforce the thrift’s dusty image. Every ad mentions computers, alerting consumers that the thrift isn’t stuck in technology’s dark ages. And, though few commercials in the 1950s did so, Home Savings television ads include blacks, Asians and Latinos.

Nonetheless, in Los Angeles County, where a fourth of the residents are foreign-born, a campaign with a tag line promising “banking the way it used to be” has its shortcomings. Though the thrift has branches in Arizona, New York and throughout California, Southern California is its largest market, where it ranks second in deposits to Bank of America.

Home Savings changed the tag line in its Spanish-language print ads to “ Nuestro servicio lo hara sentir en casa ,” which means, “Our service makes you feel at home.” The thrift has also tinkered with the copy for ads appearing in Chinese-language newspapers.

“Americana, that very specific Anglo world of the ‘50s, doesn’t have much meaning for the Hispanic consumer,” said Rochelle Newman, president of an advertising agency that is advising Home Savings on its Spanish-language ads.

There is also a question about how effective a back-to-the-’50s approach is among blacks, who remember the decade as a period of racial discrimination.

“I don’t think their focus groups consisted of a lot of African Americans,” said Carlton Jenkins, chairman of Founders Bank, a black-owned institution in South Los Angeles.

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But, Jenkins said, the ‘50s offers a way to evoke simpler times. “It’s not effective from an ethnic marketing point of view but . . . it’s not tasteless. No one is going to lose sleep over it.”

Britton, the Home Savings executive, says the ads are about “a time when service was paramount--we are not making a political statement about the ‘50s.”

She said: “Any advertising that has a point of view is by definition appealing to some and not to others. Banality is the only way to be OK with everyone.”