Yes, here's that front page article about a fictional character from an advertising campaign, something that evidently passes for culture - sorry, culcha - in New Zealand: To be fair to John Drinnan, he writes about this type of stuff all the time and probably didn't mean it to end up on the front page.After more than 10 years and 60 commercials, retirement is looming for ASB Bank's Ira Goldstein.
The bumbling banker and his grumpy New York boss are viewer favourites, and their television ads for the bank have won many industry awards.
But the ASB has dumped advertising agency TBWA Whybin, which created the campaign in 1999.
The bank won't discuss the change, but it seems Goldstein could soon be on his way back to New York after his decade-long investigation of ASB's merits.
ASB pulled the Goldstein advertisements for several weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001, out of respect for those killed and for fear of causing offence with the image of a bumbling New York banker.Right.
Anyway, I trust the same thing struck you as struck me when I looked at the picture above. the story about the ASB advertising campaign appears on the page right above... the ASB advertising campaign. Now that's what I call synergy!
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I too was amazed to see this on the front page.
ReplyDeleteThose St John term deposits are a bit of a crock - minimum deposit is something like $10,000 and for each one opened ASB will give a whole TEN DOLLARS to St John.