A Changed Vowel that is oh so Fowl….
Have you ever had one of those moments? You know, one of those brilliant moments where you come up with a campaign for a brand that is genius? You realize that perhaps your campaign idea may be fruitless because you don’t even work with the brand but because you love what you do, you can’t help yourself. Well this time I think I have done it, I really have. And this one should fly…
iTrade Canada, (formally E*Trade Canada) launched their rebranding campaign in early March with creative print executions, a new spot and host of other initiatives. All fine and dandy, but here is my big campaign idea: I propose that they re-launch the current campaign but instead of featuring a red Scotia power ball as seen here , the new executions should feature a common but highly underutilized animal, the chicken.
Beavers have been done (RIP Frank and Gordon) and thanks to TAXI’s long legged ingenuity, Telus has used just about every animal one can think of without it getting tired, BUT to my knowledge they haven’t used chickens yet. Come on Capital C, grab those chickens before TAXI does….
So where did this fowl campaign idea come from?
In July of 2008 Scotia Bank purchased E*Trade Canada for the tidy sum of $442 million U.S. dollars, immediately making them a legitimate player within the Canadian discount brokerage business, after years of trying. No offense to the anemic Scotia Direct or Trade Freedom brand, which are also owned by Scotia, intended here but E*Trade was the crown jewel.
The key for Scotia in this transaction was not the $4.7 billion in assets under management that came with E*Trade, but rather the undisclosed number of customer accounts that made up the $4.7 billion in AUM. Within the online brokerage business, the highest value customers are your heavy traders. Those select individuals who trade upwards of 50+ times a month are worth big bucks, and they are the hardest ones to get. Although it is not known just how many high volume trading accounts Scotia picked up from E*Trade, one can certainly guess that it was enough to justify the price tag. On an important side note, $442 million dollars presumably* also bought Scotia the rights to the once ubiquitous E*Trade Canada Brand.
Now this was a good brand, possibly even a great brand, especially when compared to the rest of stodgy category. It had a fun, cheeky personality; it was the anti bank (oh the irony of a bank purchasing the anti-bank and then axing it…). E*Trade Canada was the place with attitude that knew and understood the mindset of the self directed active trader. The recent US baby campaign is a fantastic demonstration of the brand’s DNA. E*Trade is also famous for starting the great Canadian price war. Thanks to them, lucky day traders are paying south of $10 bucks per trade today at their respective brokerages. But no matter, even though the singing baby is absolutely hilarious and the price has always been right at E*Trade, it is child’s play when compared to the chicken rebranding I propose…
When the news broke of Scotia acquiring E*Trade Canada, amongst the people for whom it really mattered, active traders and clients of E*Trade, the response seemed quite clear. Keep the brand intact, keep the trading platforms intact. Keep the E*Trade we love. Evidence of this sentiment is easily found on various sites – the comments and feedback from this CBC story are quite telling. Although it is only a small cross section of opinion, it would've certainly raised a red flag for me were I Scotia.
At every step of the rebrand from E to I, the signs must have been very clear to those involved...Some logical points that would have been raised are listed below:
"Maybe rebranding E*Trade Canada, a brand with more than 11 years of Canadian presence, a rich pedigree and brand recall scores that are through the roof, may not be the best idea."
"Perhaps the rationale of amalgamating our existing splintered trading platforms with E*Trade and eventually introducing a new trading platform, primarily to E*trade clients, because they now make up the bulk of our accounts, doesn’t make sense."
"None of these clients asked for a new brand or a new trading platform, they were happy with E*Trade."
Somehow the rationale listed above was addressed adequately - it must have been in order to proceed with the rebranding. No matter I say, chickens will fix it all!
And I say chickens because key people were too afraid to take a stand behind the E*Trade Canada brand. Perhaps they were afraid of the decision maker at the very top, the one who put the gauntlet down and said, “We are changing the vowel to “I” and that is final!”
Or maybe they were afraid because after doing all of the rebranding work, it finally dawned on them. A simple vowel change does not transfer the equity from one brand to another. “How can our red power ball compete with singing exchange trading babies?” They must have asked. Of course by the time they asked the latter question, too many red balls were in motion. Eating crow and reverting back to E*Trade was not an option.
Of course the competition is happy, probably even ecstatic. If the boys at Disnat and TD Waterhouse were consulted, they would’ve agreed with Scotia’s decision to scrap E*Trade Canada. “Why eat crow?” they would’ve said, “Chicken tastes much better and none of us have to worry about the anti-bank anymore. Trust us Scotia; you are doing a good thing by not listening to your new clients…”
* Scotia continued to operate under the E*Trade brand for several months, signing up new accounts until iTrade launched in March of this year.
