In providing an alternative to the financial megaliths, community banks everywhere fashion themselves as reliable neighbors, always there to help out with the groceries, watch the kids for an hour or take your deposit.
It follows that their marketing plans fall on familiar themes of caring, dependability and commitment to the community.
But with the Connecticut Bank & Trust, there’s always another factor in the equation: confidence.
It’s been that way from the beginning. When the “new” CBT opened its doors in 2004, it did so with a wink-wink press package that exuded cool self-assurance. It went like this: Barney, a bespectacled mascot who adored top-notch customer service was missing. He had become alienated by “the merger and acquisitions crazed 90’s” and wandered into the South American jungle. He returned, went the story, when David A. Lentini came looking for him so he could start a bank that reminded customers “that there were once better days.”
Now, with its three-year anniversary coming in March, President and CEO Lentini is packaging a new “concierge banking” marketing campaign and pairing it with new offerings for commercial customers. There will be new radio, print and possibly television spots selling the idea that time is money, and shouldn’t be wasted waiting in teller lines. Spokesman Geno Auriemma, University of Connecticut women’s basketball coach, may hold monthly economic roundtables with commercial customers.
At the center of the idea is a new car service, which carries deposits and runs errands for commercial customers indisposed, and which could help Lentini drive the bank to profitability in a tightening market.
No Differentiation
“You’ve got checking accounts and savings accounts and safety deposits and loans. Whatever. But pretty much everybody all has the same thing,” Lentini said about the various products banks offer.
The difference, in Lentini’s view, is how those products are delivered. He wants commercial bank customers to consider the time they spend being served by their bank. If that time was monetized — if the cost of the accountant or office manager going to the bank every week were added up — what would it amount to?
So as much as banking is the same with any bank, or in any generation, Lentini thinks there’s one exception.
“There’s one thing that’s different,” he said. “And that’s how long it takes.”
The idea that customers can save time and the related costs of banking will be the thrust of CBT’s new campaign, and is the inspiration of its new “concierge service,” which includes deposit pick ups for busy commercial clients three days a week.
It’s not the cartoonish, butler-looking mascot in the driver’s seat of CBT’s new Ford Focus that is transporting the pick ups; it’s Philip A. Pizzanello, a local retiree who fits the friendly but confident model to a tee. For 25 years, Pizzanello’s voice has been the soothing announcer of professional golfers as they stepped to the first tee at the Greater Hartford Open (now St. Paul Travelers Championship). Hired in late June, Pizzanello picks up non-cash deposits for about eight customers every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, among them a printing company, a law firm and a country club. So far the returns are good.
“They say it’s wonderful,” Pizzanello said.
Lentini plans to add a second driver, and in the summer a second car, as demand for the service picks up. The car will go anywhere in Hartford County, he said, and is available to pick up loan documents and other materials. But without drawing clear lines, he acknowledges that he can’t wait on every customer hand-and-foot.
“We’re picking up for people who need it,” he said.
Off The Plan
Though the bank may be a savvy marketer, one things it’s not is profitable. Though Lentini has long claimed it will become so by the end of 2007, the bank lost $610,000 last quarter and $844,000 the quarter before. Net loss at the end of last year was $3.2 million, or $.91 per share, an improvement over the loss of $3.5 million in 2005.
Lentini still thinks the bank will turn a profit “somewhere around” the end of the year, but everything has not gone according to plan. The yield curve aside, the bank has added branches at almost twice the rate Lentini planned. It opened up shop in Vernon and Newington in 2006 and will add Rocky Hill and Windsor this year.
“We will have probably zero new ones in 2008. Probably,” Lentini said.
But the bank continues to grow assets, and had $136.4 million worth by the end of 2006, up from $96.8 million at the same time last year. It added Auriemma as a spokesman, making its branch openings a bigger draw, and it will now consider having him hold workshops with commercial customers as part of the commitment to service promised by the Barney brought back from the South American jungle three years ago.