Great Western to Try Horse of Different Color

Like all good cowboys, Dennis Weaver is riding off into the sunset.

That’s because the TV actor’s contract as Great Western Bank’s longtime pitchman recently expired--and isn’t expected to be renewed.

Weaver, 72, the former star of the “McCloud” and “Gunsmoke” television shows, has lulled audiences in commercials for the big Chatsworth-based savings and loan for 14 years. Carrying on in the tradition of his predecessor, John Wayne, who did TV ads for Great Western until his death in 1979, Weaver, dressed in cowboy garb, stressed themes of stability and security.

In one television commercial, Weaver rode on horseback through a pine-covered forest, with Mt. Shasta in the background. Like the mountain, he said, Great Western is “big and strong. That’s why your money is so safe there.”

But times have changed. The genteel style of advertising long favored by financial institutions is giving way to attack ads.

Other savings and loans have recently adopted aggressive advertising campaigns that take direct aim at perceived customer dissatisfaction with big bank rivals. Perhaps most visible are Glendale Federal Bank’s TV commercials and billboards that skewer Bank of America and Wells Fargo for supposedly being oblivious to the needs of individual customers.

Dennis Alan Shirley, the newly appointed senior vice president and marketing director for Great Western Financial Corp., Great Western’s parent company, said he doesn’t plan that sort of jugular assault. But he did see a need for a new advertising approach.

“Great Western is in the process of turning itself from a thrift into a full-service consumer bank,” he said. “This is going to take a fundamental change in the way we go to market in terms of advertising.”

Indeed, once-staid Great Western, the nation’s second-largest S&L; company with $43.7 billion in assets, has led the industrywide charge of thrifts trying to transform into banks. Great Western expects any day now to get approval from federal regulators to create two new national banks, which would enable it to pay far less for federal deposit insurance than thrifts do.

Great Western and other S&Ls; have also been lobbying for a unified federal charter for banks and thrifts.

Great Western has also brought on board several former banking executives in the past few months. Shirley, 37, was a senior vice president and advertising director at First Interstate Bancorp before joining Great Western in May.

Great Western’s new marketing thrust will focus on promoting its expanded line of banking products and services, including small business and consumer loans, and insurance and brokerage services.

Exactly how Great Western’s ads will change is yet to be worked out, Shirley said.

But the basic idea will be to sell the way retailers do--by emphasizing specific products and competitive pricing--rather than returning to the timeworn tactic of promoting a brand image without dealing in specifics.

Dropping the cowboy motif marks a big change for Great Western. The banking institution’s former chief executive, James Montgomery, played a big role in persuading John Wayne to do ads for the S&L; in the ‘70s.

And to this day, a statue of Wayne on horseback is displayed in the company’s headquarters complex in Chatsworth.