Bank battles to rebuild lost trust

By Richard Braddell

WELLINGTON - WestpacTrust has launched a campaign to reinforce the loyalty of customers and staff, particularly in former Trust Bank strongholds such as Canterbury where they became unsettled during the merger.

The campaign, spearheaded with advertising developed with Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington, is likely to run for two or three years and will feature "a people like you" theme involving interviews with bank staff.

The aim is to recreate the community links that customers perceived Trust Bank had before the merger.

A recent Auckland University marketing department survey ranked Westpac-Trust second to last - just ahead of ANZ - in terms of the regard customers felt towards their bank. That result that was endorsed by another bank as reflecting its own research.

But WestpacTrust has made no secret of its customer relationships having received less than optimum attention during the merger process.

The bank's marketing manager, Lesley Pope, said it was hoped that advertising, in combination with other initiatives, would build on the profile and relationships that were gained during the share float.

But while WestpacTrust's image has suffered against other banks, the impact has not been universal.

In Auckland, the bank's customer satisfaction surveys rank it second only to ASB, a result WestpacTrust considers important because Auckland is the growth market.

However, the fact that the Auckland market has been more positive is probably due to Trust Bank's low penetration which has given WestpacTrust a relatively clean slate to work from.

But in Canterbury, where Trust Bank had 55 per cent of the market, there was a definite sense of grieving among both customers and staff at the loss of a local bank .

While local control had undoubtedly gone, Lesley Pope said the community was getting, if anything, better returns from the Community Trust since the sale of its Trust Bank shares, while WestpacTrust itself was also heavily involved in sponsorship and community activities.

A twist in the advertising campaign is that staff involved were chosen by other WestpacTrust staff who were asked to select people within the organisation with special attributes or skills. No one was told that the staff chosen would appear in the advertisements.