What we don't like is when they make super-normal profits (as they do in many of their businesses), treat us unfairly, don't follow through on their promises and when things go disastrously wrong (as they have in the past two years) they don't seem to get that the world has changed.

My major fear is that the opportunity to change the banking landscape for the better has not been taken and that we are now seeing a return to the status quo.

Thanks again.

I think banks in general need to present a more socially responsible and humane picture. Educating children from an early age is the way forward and I think a greater personal, family focus is important and could really improve how we as ordinary people perceive these financial giants.

Now more so than ever, the banks are viewed very coldly: bonuses and profit are what counts, and that's the bottom line. While that's their business and there's nothing ultimately wrong with that (we all need to make money, after all), the way they have acted arounded the bonus scandals has appalled us as a nation: it's not growing consumer confidence and it's certainly not going to stimulate the economy, or their own growth, if they don't make a conscious effort to grow their own personal brand and make an effort to inspire people.

People like something personal, and banking is (arguably) the least personal thing right now. I think First Direct have tried to be a bit more honest with their "Live" campaign (taking live comments from Twitter, Blogspot and elsewhere and showing them, good or bad, on the website) but it's still rather ambiguous and doesn't really inspire or educate. Where's the strategy? What do these comments mean for the future? Where do you go from here?

I really like "A Crocodile For Billy" and it would be great to see more unique and inspiring stuff like that out there in the future from more of the banks. While the current climate has made it necessary to cut marketing budgets, now is the time when a good marketing team is most needed to get these big names back on track and grow consumer confidence. Hopefully one of these executives will read your entry and take consideration!

More and more I wonder whether the way that most banks are now run, by models, by computers, by obsession with cost at the expense of customer experience, by risk and regulation, by white men who understand numbers more than people, that creating customer focused organisations and brands that can actually engage with people, is structurally and culturally impossible.

Which is why a different model of perhaps smaller, maybe less profitable, but more socially aware financial services organisations should be a model that we explore.

Thanks

Justin

And thinking specifically about A Crocodile For Billy, I'm equally amazed by the same institutions' lack of interest in starting to build some kind of brand relationships with children, even long before they're likely to become customers in their own right. I've often made the point that my teenage children know exactly what brands they aspire to in virtually every branded market sector – but they don't have any sense at all of who they wants to bank with, save with or buy insurance from. Even from a perspective of pure self-interest, institutions' complete failure to find any significant way of engaging with kids is hugely counter-productive: I'm afraid that Billy and his crocodile represent a very, very small step in the right direction.