Tag Archives: Forbes

Mar28

Why did Bank of America sell me down the river?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Lois Geller

Why did Bank of America sell me down the river?

When I moved to Florida, a lawyer suggested that I get a mortgage from Bank of America. I took his advice and had no problems for 9 years, thanks to a great mortgage man at the bank.

Then, last weekend riffling through the papers on my desk, I came across a bland and eminently ignorable note from an entity named Green Tree Lending. The letter informed me that Green Tree now owned my mortgage. I thought I had never heard of Green Tree, but apparently I had.

Looking around for letters from Bank of America I found one that had slipped my mind completely. It mentioned that BoA was dumping me off to Green Tree. The letter was just one of an endless stream of impact-free communications Americans get these days. My first takeaway from all this is DO NOT GIVE SHORT SHRIFT TO MESSAGES FROM ORGANIZATIONS THAT CAN MESS UP YOUR LIFE.

I thought I knew who and what BoA was but I was wrong. I went online to see who and what Green Tree is. If you have a strong stomach, check them out yourself. You’ll find lots of miserable stories like this: WorldFreeNews.com

I’m not as horrified by Green Tree as I know I eventually will be. For now, I’m more horrified by Bank of America. There is something seriously wrong in the bowels of that formerly reliable institution. I have no idea what it is but I suspect it goes back to the disastrous government-driven policy of issuing mortgages to people who couldn’t possibly have paid for them and the blood-sniffing sharks that took advantage of it.

Or maybe I’m missing something. If you know what it might be, I’d appreciate reading about it in your comment below.

BTW I wonder why banks (like BoA) spend all kinds of money on Branding, and then let it fall apart. I wrote a piece about Brand on my Forbes column (Marketing Matters More Than Ever): Why Brand Matters and there I said, “In one sense, perhaps the most important sense, a brand is a promise.”

So what happened to the Bank of America’s promise to me?

To Blog or Not?

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Lois Geller

To Blog or Not?

This is an odd post to be put up on my blog.

As many of you know, I also have a column on Forbes: Marketing Matters More Than Ever

There I write about how to make your advertising memorable, and why you should consider marketing to a niche (among dozens of other ideas).

Every once in a while I wonder about the value of these blogs. Do they really help generate business for my agency? I was discussing that very thought on The Jim Blasingame Radio Show. Here is the “tape” of that show (for your listening pleasure): To Blog or Not To Blog

Share your thoughts on blogging and please comment below.

Three things you can do with a brand

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Lois Geller

Three things you can do with a brand

1) Leave it alone
2) Tinker with it
3) Change it radically

When new clients visit our agency, we try to talk about their Brands and, as often as not, their eyes glaze over.

Some think they’re too small for a big brand, like Debra Kravet of Apthorp Cleaners on Manhattan’s west side. See the look of brand, the optics, we created for her:

Some think their company is so big, everyone important knows the brand already.

But I’m stubborn – a Taurus, you know – so I push it a bit. I believe that a Brand is so important that it should be looked at almost constantly. That doesn’t mean I think any given brand should be changed or even tinkered with. Maybe it’s perfect. I just don’t know until we’ve given it a physical. I do know that whatever you do with a Brand, you should know why you’re doing it.

But a lot of people don’t know what a brand really is. So I decided to write about it in my Forbes.com column. Here it is: Why Isn’t Everyone An Entrepreneur?

To my astonishment, over 40,000 people viewed the column and over a 100 left comments. Brand is more top of mind than I thought.

Have you looked at your Brand lately? How does it resonate online? How can we help you?

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