The Pacific Northwest is a fertile place. A place where good ideas take root. Today’s New York Times Magazine looks at Umpqua Bank, a regional financial player that has made the wise decison to bank heavily on experiential and lifestyle marketing.
With free wi-fi access, Umpqua brand coffee, a spacious seating area and flat-screen television monitors, the place has been designed to suggest a stylish hotel lobby where you’re tempted to hang out (and, perhaps, read a tastefully printed brochure about certificates of deposit, checking accounts and loans). This and other Umpqua branches also serve as the setting for things like sewing groups, yoga classes and movie nights. Actually, the word “branch” is not used in Umpqua’s official internal terminology: the bank operates 127 “stores” in Oregon, California and Washington. As Lani Hayward, who oversees “creative strategies for the company,” explains, Umpqua sees itself as a retailer.
The reason for this strategy is the same one that leads companies across many sectors to play the lifestyle card: a proliferation of competitors peddling largely interchangeable wares. If a bank wants to stand out, it’s fairly difficult to do so with the financial products it offers. It can, however, differentiate the manner in which it sells and packages those products. This is more or less the approach that Umpqua’s C.E.O., Ray Davis, has taken over the past dozen years or so. When he started, Umpqua was just another small regional bank, with about $150 million in deposits. Today (because of acquisitions, in addition to building new branches), the figure has increased to more than $7 billion.
The article describes the bank’s Discover Local Music project, an initiative that currently features 226 songs, available for 75 cents a track. Once you choose your tracks, the bank burns you a disc and mails it you.
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I’m a huge Umpqua fan. This is what happens when banks evolve with the times instead to stay in the backwards thinking of the 1800s. Why can’t banking be an experience like it is with Umpqua? It shouldn’t be all about the money. Banks have an opportunity to contribute to the greater good. To contribute, dammit.
FYI, Lani Hayward, Umpqua’s chief creative, was a guest columnist on talentzoo.com recently. Date of her article was 9/20/06.
Umpqua bought out my bank in northern California several years ago. I must say, they’re very good at CS. But then, so was the bank they bought. I’ve moved out of the area, but, thanks to online banking, I will probably never leave this small-town branch of Umpqua and their personal service.