A Message You Can Bank On

With several big financial names biting the dust and Congress deliberating over a $700 billion bailout plan, one banking institution is demonstrating the merits of staying on message.

A recent article in Newsweek tells the story of Hudson City Bancorp of New Jersey, which continues to rack up legitimate profits while carrying a balance sheet that the magazine terms as “pristine.”

Here’s how Newsweek puts it: “Despite the proximity to Manhattan, CEO Ronald Hermance and his 140-year-old bank have never been part of the fast-money Wall Street scene…Hudson City banks the old-fashioned way: it takes deposits and makes mortgages to people who buy homes in which they plan to live.”

According to Hermance, “We don’t have Wall Street bundle up the mortgages and sell them to someone in Norway. We’re going to live with those loans.”

In other words, Hudson City Bancorp stayed on message and is now sitting pretty.

Sure, the company’s message isn’t very sexy, and surely the temptations to stray off message were aplenty when other banks were going hog wild at the mortgage trough, but as the article states: “Maintaining high standards in lending means turning down a fair number of dates.”

While this isn’t necessarily a marketing tale, the lesson is universal. By remaining true to its core values and identity, Hudson City Bancorp continues to excel where many have now failed. In an earlier blog entry, we detailed how Honda Motor Company is reaping similar rewards for similar reasons.

Of course, your marketing message can always change and evolve. But if, in the chase for sales, you feel your message becoming inconsistent with your core values and identity, you have to ask yourself: is this a message we can really bank on? 

LPGA Drops The Message Ball

One crucial component of staying on message is maintaining control of your message, a lesson learned the hard way last week by the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) when it became known that “the LPGA will require its member golfers to learn and speak English and will suspend their membership if they don’t comply.”

A full seven days before the story broke, the LPGA communicated the new policy to its South Korean members at a mandatory meeting at a tournament in Portland, Oregon. Since the LPGA is comprised of professional golfers from around the world, this new requirement was bound to be controversial.

Yet instead of taking proactive steps to manage the story, the LPGA just sat around until it was leaked out via GolfWeek.com. By the time ESPN poured gasoline on the proverbial fire, LPGA still had nothing about the policy posted on its web site. The story quickly spread throughout the non-sports media, and much of the coverage was negative toward the LPGA.

Debate is still raging on whether or not the new language policy makes sense, but that’s not the point here. The point is that the LPGA dropped the golf ball by failing to try to control its own message. From moment one, the organization was on its heels, unable to mount a thorough response to questions it should have anticipated.

A simple proactive press release with answers to frequently asked questions would have gone a long way toward helping the LPGA control the message. Some measure of controversy was probably inevitable in this case, but becoming embroiled in one-sided media chaos was avoidable.

The lesson here is that simple steps to control your message can go a long way toward staying on message.