Corporations have a huge task realigning their practices with current economic conditions. Waste and excess are deeply ingrained in their cultures. This fact was highlighted when I recently received a mass mailing from Bank of America, welcoming me and my Countrywide mortgage to their organization. The package included a 2-page letter with contact/procedure info, a flyer detailing their privacy policy, and a booklet of "important information and new opportunities" titled Welcome Guide. The letter and privacy policy were appropriate for the situation but I became concerned when I read the Welcome Guide. The content of the Welcome Guide did not justify the complexity and cost of its printing and can only be described as marketing fluff. It used a lot of "feeling" words, with pictures of happy, attractive people. The small amount of substantive information it presented could have cheaply and easily been included in the letter.
I have some basic knowledge of the relative cost to print different kinds of documents and the Welcome Guide was not a cheap project. It used at least 4 ink colors, and the back cover was die cut so that it could be folded and glued to make a little pouch. Inside the pouch were 5 cards, each describing a different product or service with fluffy words, often one word to a page. (Bank of America's 2008 Annual Report mentions plans to have a Countrywide operations rebranding in late April 2009—this must be it. But in our highly connected and communicative environment, does corporate rebranding still require spending on meaningless 4-color glossy booklets?)
Bank of America is a recipient of TARP funds. So I find it ironic that they need the injection of my hard-earned tax dollars to stay afloat, yet they can afford to squander money on intellectually insulting marketing projects. This kind of business activity sends the message that they are clueless in the face of our current economic crisis.
I realize Bank of America is a really big company and it takes time to change a big corporate culture, so I was going to let this issue slide. But I'm concerned about the widespread wasteful business practices that lurk in corporations and I think we have a responsibility to point out this waste. In an effort to help raise corporate consciousness I sent an email to Bank of America's investor relations department (as a taxpayer I am now an investor!) asking them to please justify the cost of this expensive piece of marketing fluff.
I received an auto-acknowledgement and am waiting for a substantive reply. I hope I can have a thoughtful conversation with Bank of America. I will suggest that instead of printing meaningless documents, they put those funds in a rainy-day savings account to cover them during troubled times!
Stay tuned . . .
