Great Story Behind a Great Commercial

I was listening to Sound Opinions yesterday and they had the record producer, Joe Boyd, on as a guest. Joe Boyd is a legend who produced early Pink Floyd, The Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Richard & Linda Thompson, and Nick Drake. He told a story about Nick Drake and the song "Pink Moon" that I thought was very interesting. He said he and Nick's family were approached about using the song for a commercial and his initial reaction and recommendation was to not let it be used. Volkswagen, though, sent him the story board for the ad and he was won over by the fact that there would be no voice over in the ad; the ad would simply contain Nick's music and a couple of sound effects.

I don't think that ad sold many Cabriolets but I think it did add some equity to the Volkswagen brand. Why don't more advertisers go for these more subtle, less jarring ads? Let's face it, 99.99% of ads are tuned out and in a lot of cases they are physically tuned out by someone lowering the volume on the TV or fast fowarding through them. Why not make ads that, at the very least, don't aurally assault people and give a quiet moment before their show starts again?

PS: This may be my favorite commercial of all time.

Shutting Down Interest

In Seth Godin's post, "Shutting Down Interest", he mentions a politician going from 0 to 60 when someone shows the least bit of interest in them. Here's a mortgage company example of that:

Last week I filled out a form on the Quicken Loans website to try to get some rate and closing cost information on their mortgages. [I'm not ready to apply for a mortgage. I'm just trying to narrow down my options for when I am ready.] Completing the form almost immediately resulted in 4 boilerplate emails and a call. I ignored the call and responded to one of the emails and asked for rate and closing cost info. That resulted in 3 more emails and 2 more calls, none of which answered my question. They all said pretty much the same thing: "Let's get started on that loan." I finally sent an email to the individual at Quicken Loans who was contacting me and said no more emails or calls and reiterated that I was just looking for rates and closing costs. I then got an email telling me no mortgage company in America would give me that information without first getting some information from me. Though not the answer I wanted, I finally got a real answer to my question. If I had gotten that reply to my first email, I wouldn't have crossed Quicken Loans off my list of possibles.

Lifelock! Where have you been all of my life?

Lifelock, a nifty little service that "locks" down your credit file so no one can touch it without setting off alarms, bells, and whistles, makes me wonder why this isn't just the way things work. Why don't Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion simply do this for everyone without charge? I know these companies don't really exist for consumers, but how much money and sanity could have been spared if 10 years ago the credit bureaus started contacting people to confirm their credit applications. I guess I just answered my own question, there was nothing in it for them except great expense, but everyone's been trying desperately to protect their identity or their customer's identity with everything from low tech (shredders) to high tech (multifactor authentication) and still the fraud goes on. A person's identity is only worth their assets and their credit, and I'm guessing most people's credit is worth more than the assets a fraudster can easily get their hands on, so it makes sense to put a lock on the credit spigot.

Personal FinanceWorks

I attended Digital Insight's National Conference last week and the big news there was Personal FinanceWorks, the first product that shows the promise of the Intuit/Digital Insight marriage. FinanceWorks is a basic, online version of Quicken and likely represents the future of online banking. I say "likely" because I think there is still a chance for online banking to go in the opposite direction and offer fewer features rather than more. Don't get me wrong, FinanceWorks looks great and a big step forward, but I think consumers would be better served by an open framework that would free their banking data from it's constraints and let it be pushed, pulled and mashed in myriad ways. I certainly like the idea of one of our members using our site to keep track of all of their finances but I don't see Gen Y bending to our will.