I ran across this posting that commented sternly on an ad that Bank of America took out in the Wall Street Journal. It ran a full two pages and in that two pages, it said…. not much. Besides a bit of fine print and a metaphor to orchestras, the entire ad had nothing to offer the reader but some ink stained fingers. With space that size, there is so much potential for saying something meaningful. Perhaps brand metaphors have a time and place in advertising, but for Bank of America, a negative economy isn’t one of them. Read the post below.

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch took out a double-page spread in the Wall Street Journal last week to deliver what it must have felt was a very important message to its current and would-be customers:

Nothing.

The spread was mostly black ink. A conductor’s hands appear in the lower-right corner, a header reads “Expertise and resources, seamlessly orchestrated,” and two lines of mouseprint explain that “understanding the score” is important to providing lots of financial services.

And we wonder why:

• Nobody trusts financial firms anymore, and
• Newspaper ads are a dying breed? (more…)