What's the Message?

A big part of the pleasure of reading the latest New Yorker magazine each week has always been its great cartoons. And more often than not there's at least one you can't figure out, and you end up arguing with your friends about what it means. Right?

This ad for Royal Bank of Scotland is like that. The entire ad space is occupied by a bleed illustration which is the photographic equivalent of a tricky New Yorker cartoon you don't understand right away.

We see five city office workers standing in line to buy their morning cup of coffee from a kiosk. In their midst is a hook and chain from a crane high above. A sign on the wall warns them, “Men working above” even though one of them, we find out, is female.

And suspended from the crane hook is a little carrier bearing a coffee cup. It is waiting in line too. As the line moves forward, the crane operator up above moves the hook and cup forward too — a neat trick.

Of course all coffee stands serve your java in a plastic foam container, but presumably they humor this regular customer by pouring it into her cup.

To the reader's naked eye, the cup already seems to have a topping of foam. The crane operator's order for a café latte has already been filled? Then why is the cup standing in line?

A high-powered magnifying glass, which naturally every magazine reader always keeps handy, reveals that what is sticking up out of the cup is actually not foam but a dollar bill. It also reveals (although I could barely read it with my magnifier) that the side of the cup is labeled “Jenny — latte.”

Aha! Now the meaning of the photo cartoon becomes clear. And it took only a minute or two out of an unusually curious reader's day to figure it out. Jenny is the crane operator, and this is how she buys her morning coffee from above.

The cartoon has a caption, in the form of what purports to be a headline and subhead at the bottom.

The “head”: Make it happen.

The “subhead”: Find out how ingenuity can help you make it happen. rbs.com.

So now we get to the point of the ad.

The crane operator found an ingenious way to get a cup of coffee without having to go all the way down to the street and stand in line for it. And, the ad suggests, if you go to the Web site rbs.com (which, we learn in fine print under the logo initials display, is The Royal Bank of Scotland Group), you will find an ingenious solution to your problem too.

The only trouble is, I don't know what kind of problem I have. And when I went to the site, there was no mention of ingenuity or ingenious solutions that I could find — just a complex site devoted to information about the bank and its services. Another typical example of the creative director failing to check with and coordinate with the Webmaster.

This left me with a considerable problem in designing and writing a makeover. How can I redo an ad so it will convey its message better if I don't know what it's trying to say? As an uninformed non-professional in the banking field, I certainly wouldn't be able to create an example of the bank's ingenuity out of whole cloth.

And who was the ad meant for? A personal banking customer with $10,000 to borrow or deposit? Or a big prospective corporate client who has or needs $10 million?

Since I had no way of knowing what was intended, I finally decided to do what the Web site does — open the doors to and welcome every kind of potential client or customer.

Next, I wanted to “start where the reader is.” Hm. So this is an ad for Royal Bank of Scotland…not exactly a household name in the United States. What has all this got to do with me?

Well, in the last seven years, chiefly through an expansion and acquisitions spree, this 281-year-old bank has leaped into prominence as a major player on the international banking scene. And presumably it's now hungry for more U.S. customers of all kinds.

But unless the reader is the CEO of a pretty substantial U.S. corporation, he or she won't feel that a giant bank like RBS would be interested in their modest little banking needs. And besides, do you really want to deal with some stodgy old foreign bank most people have never heard of?

I decided to turn this disadvantage into an advantage, first by flat-out welcoming the prospect (which most banks don't exactly do) in my headline: “Welcome to Today's Royal Bank of Scotland,” and then, in my subhead, by immediately reassuring the reader with a powerful unique selling proposition that RBS is, after more than 280 years in business, still “not too big or too small, too old or too new, to serve you better and more personally than any other bank in the world.”

Then (brace yourself for the shock, Makeover Maven readers), this is followed by some short body copy which fleshes out the headline claim.

Alongside the copy I decided to place a photo of the original bank headquarters, built in the 1700s and still in use today. Again, it was a question of turning a disadvantage into an advantage. I felt there was a certain snob appeal in being associated with this centuries-old bank — sort of like having your custom-made suit produced by a traditional British tailoring firm. And since the copy establishes the bank's impressive size and growth, the photo does not convey stodginess.

Finally, I wanted to advertise the Web site and the inclusiveness of the appeal. For this I used the visual metaphor of a doorway, one door for each broad category of banking service.

To retain part of the original ad's theme, I did keep the “Make it happen” slogan in the logo display. It's one of those vague ad-talk phrases that neither helps nor hurts very much, so why not make the boss happy?

Remember, the purpose of this makeover is not to sign up new customers on the spot, any more than the original ad tried to do. It's just to encourage likely prospects of all kinds to take the first step — go to the Web site and learn more. I believe my makeover would do a far better job of that.

W

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THOMAS L. COLLINS (thomas.l.collins@verizon.net) has been a direct marketing copywriter, ad maker, agency creative director and co-author of four books on marketing. He is currently an independent creative and marketing consultant based in Portland, OR.

Find more Makeover Maven columns at http://directmag.com/opinions-columnists/makeovermaven/.