As soon as my eyes went to this news from HSBC – “We want fewer clients who earn less than AED20,000 a month”, I went into a round of blurps and hiccups.
It just doesn’t abide by any logic to so senselessly give away all the years of positioning that the bank has done – World’s local bank – and make it look like no more than a hollow marketing speak. And what did all those market / financial / economic analysts drawing their dirhams from the bank do to recommend such a move?
According to official figures, most of the population in the UAE earn less than AED 20,000 a month. And what use are those screaming HSBC ads about “never underestimating the importance of local knowledge” when they have absolutely got it all wrong this time around.
Other than destroying the image it has spent millions of dollars creating, it is hard to see what purpose HSBC thinks alienating “classified as poor” people in the UAE serves. Does it think these people are stupid? Do they clog up HSBC’s brilliantly dynamic (add my visual sacarsm there!) phone banking systems with their moronic questions? Or are they just unsightly? Perhaps the bank wants a richer, better nourished, better looking customer – is that the subtext?
Come’on… when I look at my same-age peers, I can find very few who will be crossing the HSBC definition of poor… but if you consider the lifetime value of these professionals, they are very soon going to move to the HSBC definition of not-poor and then, it will be absolutely ridiculous to expect them to switch over to HSBC.
And with this move, it is only a matter of time before “the bank becomes too poor to let us have them look after our money”. I’ll let you know.
For the HSBC marketing team… it’s better to spend another few millions to re-position the bank as the “world’s only elitist bank“.
