Nov

17

Busting the Piggy Bank Story?

November 17, 2005 |

Piggy Bank Ban was was reported by many sources, including here. However, according to MediaWatch, the story should have been on the chopping block.

Halifax Press Office issued a statement saying that they banks had not used piggy banks in their branches for a number of years. NatWest also issued a statement saying that the latest promotion, ending in September, featuring a picture of a piggy bank was replaced by a newer scheduled campaign. They plan to continue using piggy banks as a promotional items.

Piggy banks have been and will continue to be used as a promotional item by NatWest. You are correct that there is a NatWest piggy bank collection, which are now collectors items. These piggy banks were available with our Young Savers Account from 1983 to 1989. They were withdrawn in 1989 and replaced with a World Wildlife Fund piggy bank.

Doing a little digging on this little piggy was difficult and didn’t yield too much information. However, there was an article dated September 5, 2002 that discussed the promotion of the piggy bank by parent bank NatWest. The effort was a success in England but in Ulster’s Irish market it was not. Apparently David Went (IL&P chief at the time of the article’s writing) had chosen a ‘friendly’ hippo for their promotion.

MediaWatch said that it was a nasty and damaging story and Mark Hemingway from Halifax said they were “realistic enough to know that no damage has been actually done.” What I would like to know is what damage was caused. Consider who seems to be in danger when police protection was needed when a paper depicted the prophet Muhammad in a ‘poor light’.

Perhaps, it is nothing more than the withdrawl of a promotion. Marketing is the driving force of all these decisions. It would be interesting, in light of events in Paris, to know what the banks discovered in their marketing efforts.


Comments

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind