rolled out a new tagline only months after unveiling ‘Let’s Get It
Done’. The stricken group, looking to ditch around $500 billion in
non-strategic assets, is hoping the new motto, reinforced with a
major advertising campaign in five global markets, will help
kick-start its recovery. Douglas Blakey
reports.
If in doubt, change the tagline. The largest US bank by assets but
no longer in terms of market capitalisation – Citi shares have lost
20 percent of their value this year – has launched an advertising
campaign in five key markets and brought back to life an old
tagline, ‘Citi Never Sleeps’, which the group believes is one of
the most successful tags in its marketing history.
A change of tagline is not a novelty at Citi, having run with a
number of tags since ‘The Citi Never Sleeps’ débuted back in
1978.
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The line was dropped in the 1990s, replaced by ‘Where Money Lives’
which in turn gave way to ‘Live Richly’ in 2001. In 2002, ‘This is
Citigroup’ took centre stage in a series of ad campaigns in the US,
Europe, Latin America and Japan, while April 2007 witnessed the
launch of the short lived ‘Let’s Get It Done’, backed up by an
advertising blitz developed by Citi’s newly appointed media agency
Publicis.
Explaining the rationale for dusting off the ‘Citi Never Sleeps’
tag, Citi spokesman Mark Rodgers told RBI: “As our new CEO
Vikram Pandit began to develop his overall strategy for Citi, he
wanted to deploy a tagline that would highlight Citi’s scope and
its around-the-globe, around-the-clock commitment to clients as the
company moves dynamically into the future. Realising that Citi owns
one of the most famous taglines of all time, which is even more
relevant today than it was in the past, he determined that ‘Citi
Never Sleeps’ appropriately portrays the company today and includes
its future aspirations.”
Along with Swiss bank UBS and Merrill Lynch, Citi has been one of
the highest profile casualties of the US credit crunch. It has
posted more than $40 billion in write downs, raised around $40
billion of new capital and slashed its dividend by 40 percent in
the past year.
Talking about the cost of the new initiative, Rodgers
added: “The spend is lower than what we spent on our brand campaign
last year. At that time, we ran the campaign in 11 countries, and
this year we are running it in five key financial markets, the US,
UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. Because we are running in fewer
markets and used existing creative components, we have a very
cost-efficient approach to the campaign.”
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By GlobalDataUS press reports speculated Citi spent around $450 million on brand
advertising in 2007 and will spend up to $30 million promoting the
latest brand campaign, though Rodgers would not disclose any
advertising spends.
Citi’s branding strategy has been a work-in-progress in recent
times; in 2006 the bank worked with Landor Associates, the
brand-consulting subsidiary of global media agency WPP, on a brand
evaluation project. This led to bank rebranding itself as Citi and
dropping its familiar red umbrella logo in early 2007.
The first of the series new of ads was released to analysts at an
investor presentation on 9 May, at which Pandit unveiled plans to
shed up to $500 billion (or over 20 percent of the group’s total)
in non-core assets within three years, boost revenue by up to 10
percent annually and target cost savings of $15 billion by 2011,
termed “re-engineering benefits” by Pandit.
The new ads feature voiceovers by the Oscar-winning US actor Forest
Whitaker and retain some of the music and creative footage from the
last ‘Let’s Get It Done’ commercials, with the new slogan at the
end.
“We tested the tagline with consumers again recently and its strong
recall and favourability were confirmed; it is arguably one of the
most famous taglines of all time,” said Rodgers.
According to Pandit, the bank’s strategic investments will be in
developing markets, leading to suggestions the assets it is likely
to sell will be in developed markets. In 2007, 32 percent of
revenue was derived from emerging markets, including Central and
Eastern Europe, Asia (ex-Japan), Mexico and Latin
America.
