We’ve told you a lot about the shenanigans of SA’s Big Four banks recently. Yesterday a Twitter storm erupted around Standard Bank and FNB, with the former accusing FNB of misleading advertising. The irony? The mud-slinging quite quickly turned in the direction of Standard Bank, with Tweeters taking FNB’s side.
First, Standard Bank (@StandardBankGrp) had a little moan about its competitor’s aggressive new marketing campaign which positions FNB as a customer-orientated bank. (Because no-one likes good customer service from their bank?) Standard Bank attempts to summarise its issue with FNB’s claims in a series of tweets:
- @StandardBankGrp: “We instruct attorneys to lodge complaint with ASA against FNB for advertising that misleads the public.”
- @StandardBankGrp: “FNB ads mislead South Africans by laying claim to several firsts.”
- @StandardBankGrp: “Our Mzansi account has never had a monthly management fee.”
- @StandardBankGrp: “We had an account with no monthly management fee back in 2004.”
- @StandardBankGrp: “We do offer free online banking.”
Standard Bank is clearly not happy at all with FNB “pretending they were the first” to do all of those things in their ad campaign. Unfortunately no-one really seems to care. Here are some of the scathing responses from Twitter users:
- @CreateAStirSA: “Wish @StandardBankGrp spent as much time on twitter responding to clients as they do bleating about #FNB! If you complain, you’re ignored.”
- @JonathanWitt: “Here’s an idea @StandardBankGrp: instead of whinging about #FNB why not try be a better bank? This is exactly why I don’t bank with you.”
- @mjubes: “@StandardBankGrp Cry me a Steve! Why not create an ad to show how many customers switched from your dinosaur bank to #FNB #Innovation”
- @NickiBurley: “Wow I think STD Bank misjudged the loyalty of #FNB customers on twitter – just makes Std Bank seem vengeful #brandfail”
Not sure Standard Bank was expecting that. FNB did not engage much with the debate, but one message from its official Twitter account kind of summed things up.
In response to a number of tweets suggesting FNB challenge Standard Bank with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), @Rbjacobs (who calls himself FNB Guy) had this to say:
“Really no time for a Twitter fight. Too busy making customers happy.”
[Source: Memeburn]
