At BrandCulture Company, we have been seeing and are helping clients take advantage of a desire among consumers to shift their purchasing decisions back to smaller, local businesses. During the 80’s and 90’s, the Coca-Cola Company grew immense global market share with its “Think Global, Act Local” philosophy, but found that it became increasingly disconnected from its local bottling partners and customers.  In the beginning of the last decade, Coca-Cola began to evolve its go-to-market strategy with a “Think Local, Act Local” philosophy.  Coca-Cola continues today with its local community through its “Live Positively” campaign and Virtual Community Center .

Today, ‘buy local’ campaigns have emerged in cities ranging from Santa Clarita, California to Boston, Massachusetts – localized efforts to tap into consumers’ sense of place and home.

The “Move Your Money” campaign, while emanating from a populist dissatisfaction with mega-banks’ influence, also taps into this sense of local community.  Interestingly, among “Move Your Money” targets is Bank of America, a company that has attempted its own localized community focus, with community message boards and support of community arts.

But walk into a Bank of America branch and finding a banker that can actually do something for you is another story.  Instead of a real community focus, Bank of America’s sophisticated technology infrastructure supports a network of faceless banking professionals interacting with customers, cutting off their credit while charging extraordinary services fees. Its no wonder the Bank of America Community Message Board in this blogger’s local branch is nearly empty.

“Move Your Money,” we will follow with interest your effort to use consumer choice to spark a redistribution of power from big banks to community institutions. But let’s not forget that while local presence is important, what matters to consumers above all else is that the products, businesses and financial institutions that they choose deliver what they promise.

See if you recognize this Ford spot:

Although this minor masterpiece created by JWT Team Detroit may not find a home on the Superbowl, it has run almost every where else.  CNN.  Desperate Housewives.  NFL and NBA games.  The Food Network.  House.  HG TV.  The World Series.  Stanford stunning USC out on the gridiron.  Ubiquitous saturation of the airwaves across eclectic genres, fourteen seconds at a time.

Our interest in the impact of this ad is more than passing.  Somewhat inexplicably, this fine performance features talent not heretofore known for acting, but that of a co-worker who happens to be one of BrandCulture’s greatest brand-builders of all time.  As part of a continuing advertising trend to feature “real people” instead of professional actors (see what Volkswagen did in the UK with the Tiguan), Ford concealed its intent while creating its “Drive One” campaign:  “In fact, these people didn’t know that it was Ford filming them, or that they would be used in commercials.”

What are the results of all of this verisimilitude?  Setting aside for a moment the issue of whether these spots moved any metal, they inarguably skyrocketed our co-worker’s own awareness.  While not yet as well known as Jared or Verizon’s “can you hear me now guy,” our young hero has achieved no small amount of fame as “the guy from the Ford commercial.”  The modern-day Los Angeles equivalent of the butcher, baker and candlestick maker stop him on the streets.  Peet’s baristas hail him from afar and craft custom beverages for him.  The fellow who brings sandwiches around our office building admitted he caught a glimpse of the ad while watching a basketball game he’d TiVoed and then went back to watch the spot.  Schoolchildren query him at playgrounds on how they too can appear on television by talking about a car gas cap, or, more accurately, lack thereof.

The Ad Contrarian recently opined that the problem with television advertising isn’t that it doesn’t work, but there are too many channels fracturing the audience.  This latest BrandCulture foray into a focus group of one reveals that if you maintain enough frequency and breadth with television advertising, you can still reach your intended audience (in this case the American motoring public) . . . and then some.  We also believe that television advertising still is a powerful tool to drive brand familiarity and awareness.  That said, we also believe brands can’t pretend to be something they’re not, no matter how high the advertising spend.  Hollow assertions can make beautiful ads — and beautiful castles in air — that ultimately undermine and destroy brand value.  When building a brand, begin with an idea, develop the creative and only then communicate and broadcast it.  And what’s the idea here?  Finding out what drivers actually value in their cars instead of stylized shots on winding country roads in crepuscular light?  This might just be simple enough to work.

We’re with 19th century retailer John Wanamaker and his insight, “I know that half of my advertising doesn’t work. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”  Heaven forfend that we fall prey to the logical fallacy common among advertising professionals and market researchers alike of conflating correlation with causation.  Still, we’d like to think that the exceptional talent resident at BrandCulture helped fuel at least part of that billion dollars in profit Ford earned last quarter, albeit adding an entirely new dimension to our more traditional consulting services.

The last time we rented a car in San Francisco for a day, the rate was $77. So far so good. Plus $17.50 “Airport Transportation Fee” (presumably for riding the “people mover” tram the 1/2 mile from the terminal to the rental car center), 2.5% “California Tourism Commission Assessment,” 11.11% “Concession recovery fee,” and 9.25% sales tax for a total of $112.95. In other words, the fees amounted to almost 50% of the base cost of renting the car.

As ridiculously (and unsustainably) low as our airfare was, these garbage tourism fees that presumably soak visitors instead of voters have become shocking even to travelers accustomed to high “transient” taxes. And the trend shows no signs of abating. In July, the City of Oakland raised its occupancy tax from 11% to 14% and Las Vegas bumped its room tax up 3 percentage points to 12%. In New York City room taxes now total 14.45% + $3.50 a day. Thinking of renting a car in Alaska? Your bill is likely to be 54.4% higher than the base price. Worse yet are taxes that raise revenue completely unrelated to tourism. Kansas City assesses a $4 “Downtown Arena” fee on rentals to help pay for the costs of the Sprint Center.

In Georgia they’ve even added a rental car tax to finance a stadium for the Atlanta Braves minor league baseball team.

And the list goes on. The rapacity for new sources of revenue doesn’t stop at hotel rooms and rental cars. Take, for example, parking tickets! This year the State of California decided to assess a $4.50 per ticket charge for the “State Court Facilities Construction Fund,” presumably to build better facilities in which to process the additional revenue generated by the new fees. Not to be outdone, local municipalities are adding their own new fees to the tickets, either rounding the $4.50 up to $5 or, in the case of Oakland again, upping the ante with a $10 additional per ticket fee. Equal justice under the law indeed.

Many may dismiss this fiscal legerdemain as a nuisance driven by tough economic times. But the net result of all this nonsense is that visitors often have little sense of what a trip will actually cost. More than a mere irritant, the bait-and-switch nature of these “assessments” leaves visitors with both unanticipated expenses and the sense that they are the chumps. Lured by experiences available Only in San Francisco or by San Deigo’s $8.6 million “Happy Happens” positioning, visitors find instead that they are subsidizing the common wealth through unexpected fees with little connection to travel.

Such sources of funds will likely prove irresistible for their pernicious ability to raise revenue without attracting attention. But there is a limit to what visitors will endure. At some point travelers just may vote with their feet (and wallets) and go elsewhere or stay home. When this happens, the $1,000 parking ticket can’t be far behind.

Few financial services brands have suffered the recent public spotlight with greater dread and discomfort than credit card issuers. In past cycles of scrutiny, the answer to credit card industry critics was “increased transparency” — if consumers could understand the terms and conditions of their credit cards, they had some chance of actually abiding by them. But transparency alone hasn’t worked, given the dire state of household consumer credit debt, estimated at $8,000 – $10,000 for every American family with a card or close to $1 trillion dollars in total. Even upscale customers find their mailboxes largely bereft of enticing offers and existing credit lines curtailed or canceled. There’s no doubt that consumers overspent, but the card industry also overreached, creating concepts like “universal default,” where card issuers hike interest rates when consumers made late payments to a different, unrelated lender. Double cycle billing to maximize interest charges for consumers who occasionally carry a balance. Fees for exceeding credit limits even when purchases have been authorized by the lender. Such practices culminated in President Obama’s signing the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (notice the clever acronym . . . Credit CARD Act) shortly before Memorial Day, promising a new era of better behavior by all parties.

Even with the new regulations coming on line nine months from now, there will still be plenty of room for shenanigans for those who rely on the act’s protections and ignore the fine print. Take a solicitation BrandCultureTalk received for the First Premier Bank Platinum MasterCard.

At first blush, this offer looked pretty great: a 9.9% APR on all purchases and a 5% rebate on all on-time payments for 12 months. What’s not to like?

What this card gives on the one hand it takes away — and then some — with fees . . . and more fees. Account Set Up Fee: $29. Program Fee(?): $95. Annual Fee: $48. Monthly Servicing Fee: $7/month or $84 a year. An additional card will set you back another $20. For those savvy consumers who think they can make up these fees with the 5% purchase rebate, think again: the credit line on this card can be as little as $250. The final analysis: the First PREMIER Bank Platinum MasterCard, less the fees for the first month leaves you with $71 of credit available and $179 in new debt. And this is their “Platinum” card? After six months, you may be able to increase your credit limit, but you’ll pay another $25 fee each time your limit is bumped up. There are fees for obtaining Internet access to your account ($3.95), automatic payments ($11 or $7 for each payment), Priority Mail for your card ($35). Incredibly, the fees keep coming even after you close your account; in addition to ongoing interest, there is an additional fee of $3 a month if you close your account, but have an outstanding balance of $20 or more.

Rather than focus on fees, First PREMIER understandably chooses to accentuate the positive (“we didn’t take TARP funds”) in a jaunty little intro called It’s Time for UP!, summoning sufficient positive momentum to rival that of Levitra. And here’s President and CEO Dana Dykhouse promoting “U + PREMIER. Stronger Together.”

No amount of peppy branding or “UP” messaging can cure the confiscatory fees that put this card in the running for “worst ever.” Distracting sophistry aside (“Response in 60 Seconds!” Low APR!” “5% Rebate for on-time payments!”), this card is a financial disaster. Now First PREMIER doesn’t target people with pristine credit with this card “[b]ecause we know that bad things happen to good people.” But hasn’t the sub-prime consumer suffered enough?  A different card from First PREMIER features an annual fee of $75 and an unprecedented 79.9% APR:

It’s pretty clear that qualifying for these cards represents less a reversal of fortune than a cure that is worse than the disease. Folks with damaged credit should look elsewhere — department store “house” charge cards, gasoline cards, secured cards, etc. — to rebuild their FICO scores. And others with better credit profiles can find far better Platinum MasterCards to shoot for . . . like that offered by the Farm Bureau Bank. Currently it offers an APR of just 7.24% with no annual fees.

Yes indeed, the Santa Barbara Pinnacle Club was none other than a stealth version of the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Pinnacle Club, renamed and rebranded.  To the uninitiated, the Motorola Pinnacle Club is a corporate retreat/award for select members of the top 5% company’s top national and international two-way radio dealers.

Although it is perfectly fine to keep outsiders away from a private event, the extreme cloak and dagger approach had the unintended effect of making it seem that Motorola had something it really wanted to sequester from public scrutiny.  Discretion is one thing, active concealment another.  Ever since AIG infamously spent over $440,000 to host an event at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort & Spa

after accepting $85 Billion in taxpayer bailout, corporate events have gone clandestine, or simply gone.  Back in February, Wells Fargo canceled its employee recognition event in Las Vegas, inspiring its CEO John Stumpf to take out full page ads in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal defending the intent behind the event:

Shortly thereafter, State Farm Insurance announced that it was canceling its 2009 sales meetings as well.

In light of Motorola’s 71% negative return to investors in 2008, it is understandable that the company would not want to be perceived as squandering corporate resources.  But Motorola is not AIG.  The company is not living off the public weal; it spent its own money on the Bacara Pinnacle event, not the taxpayers.  Motorola core businesses seem to be regaining solid footing and the market seems to agree:  MOT is up almost 70% in the last three months.  Placing a code of omerta over an event designed to honor the sources of revenue essential to improved financial performance puts those invited in the awkward position of feeling apologetic and guilty about their own success — and can undermine the very reason for hosting the event in the first place.  Making business events and retreats the scapegoat moreover adds insult to injury to the hard-hit hospitality industry — an industry that according to the US Travel Association supports 2.4 million jobs, $244 billion in spending and $39 billion in tax revenue though business travel each year in the US.

These are tough times for virtually everyone, and no company relishes being pilloried for perceived profligacy.  BrandCultureTalk is heartened that a company like Motorola is not only selling two-way radios, but it is selling enough of them to bankroll a great multi-day party.  There is nothing wrong or shameful with celebrating success, particularly when it’s so hard won these days.  And if past is prologue, invitations to corporate retreats will continue to provide powerful incentives for increased individual and corporate performance.  If all corporate travel and event sponsors act like Motorola and conduct their meetings and events on a clandestine basis, the current stigma toward events will only be reinforced when news inevitably leaks out, and delay the return to a more normal, sustainable business environment that rewards results.

It’s time to come clean.