A Hire Calling

If you can’t beat ‘em, hire ‘em.

Bank of America, the main target of a funny but barbed advertising campaign by Glendale Federal Bank, has hired away the Glenfed manager who ran it.

A high-profile part of Clark Collins’ job as Glenfed’s director of marketing has been to tweak the San Francisco behemoth with broadcast and billboard ads telling consumers, “You Deserve Better” and exhorting them to call “1-800-41-FED UP” if they agree that big banks provide lousy service.

Wells Fargo also comes in for some needling, particularly in a new series of radio ads that parody its hostile takeover campaign for First Interstate Bancorp, but Bank of America is the chief butt of Glenfed’s gibes.

One feature of the billboards is a giant red circle with a slash through “BofA.”

No hard feelings, apparently.

In what a BofA spokesman called “a career decision,” Collins has joined his former adversary as head of marketing for the bank’s California consumer loan division.