Fascinating! My initial reaction was also one of scepticism, I wonder why I felt that?
How many times have we seen a corporate change its colour, but nothing else!
All we want is;
Short queues at the branch
Easy access to our money.
A reasonable interest rate on savings.
No rip-off charges.
And to be able to get a loan easily when we want one, and not when we don’t want one!

Some may want the branch people in clown suits, and other customers will want dour serious bankers.
The only UK bank that really changed the face of banking, was First Direct, and I’ve been with them ever since.
“Abbey” would have to do a fundamental cultural change from within, first.
Both you and I know it.
Good Luck to them!

Hello John,

I found your site after you kindly linked to our What Brand Are You website. Funnily enough this Abbey rebrand is exactly the sort of nonsense WBAY pokes fun at.

So Abbey have tried to 'simplify' banking by doing things like calling a savings account "Put Aside". Eh? Your new logo looks like "My First Bank" and now you are calling your accounts wacky names like "Put Aside"? I don't think that's simplifying things. Was "Savings Account" deemed to complicated?

The TV ad could have been stunning, but it's just dull. Imagine how excited the creative team would have been to get a brief like, 'Turning banking on it's head'. At last a chance to really shake things up! But no...

And the new logo is quite frankly an insult to designers. It really is one of the worst logo's I've ever seen.

What troubles me must however, is that in 6 months time Abbey will announce it's still leaking money, the campaign has been a failure and they are going back to how they were. Upon which people up and down the land will mutter, "bloody designers" and yet again the reputation of creative companies everywhere is tarnished by one high profile disaster. We all know advertising and design can add value and increase profits yet all the man on the street gets to see are shameful examples like this.

Banks like First Direct, Smile, Egg and Cahoot are genuinely different and do it so much better. The strangest thing is that Abbey owns Cahoot - it set it up and it still runs it. Was it not good enough yet?

Ben

Ben Terrett
The Design Conspiracy
11-15 Betterton Street
London WC2H 9BP

Tel: 020 7470 8841
Fax: 020 7470 8842
http://www.thedesignconspiracy.com

Well - You're right!! The company cannot change overnight and also correct - they are changing their branding YET again and thirdly right again - they ARE still leaking money!! So much so that they are STILL having to make redundancies -Myself being one of them! after 8 wasted years and put "at risk" 3 times in as many years I've finally decided redundancy is my best move and have cut ties with SHABBY & IRRATIONAL!!
"YOU CAN CHANGE THE COVER BUT IT'S STILL THE SAME SHITTY OLD BOOK INSIDE!!"

Nikki: Time certainly has told. That claim about "starting a revolution" looks pretty grandiose with hindsight. Actually, it sounded pretty grandiose at the time.

Well, they changed their logo again, now thanks to the the merger with a Spanish bank. I for one I'm not surprised, as I knew the previous redesign just didnt' have substance.