Bank Merger Yields Interesting "Do Good" Campaign

Doing well and doing good - for banks that are merging and want to generate financial AND social dividends, here's a lesson from Wells Fargo.

Wells Fargo is taking over my local Wachovia branch. (Yes, banks are still merging - something you may have remembered from the 90's. It's been a while since TD Bank took over Commerce Bank and so on and so forth. My Wachovia used to be a First Pennsylvania bank, I think, way back when. And transitional marketing is a discipline in and of itself, as my former connections with the old Wilcox agency in NYC taught me.) But I digress.

The point of this post - take a look at that buckslip above from Wells Fargo. It's more than just a piece about a bank name change - it's about doing good! Wells Fargo is inviting bank customers to vote for their favorite charity from a list of five local contenders (all prominent in the Greater Philadelphia area from which I hail) and then goes on to say they will donate a total of $80,000 amongst the charities - every one gets a piece, who gets more depends on the number of votes.

Now that's cause marketing unlike anything I've seen in the banking merger world. Right on, Wells Fargo.