The Thirty Second Spot is Very Much Alive

Alive on good old-fashioned TV, alive on YouTube, alive as an embed in TweetDeck. It's going nowhere, never went anywhere. Sorry, Joe. We will watch a good ad even on our DVRs. Or at least I will.

Ally Bank, formerly GMAC, does some nice spots via BBH New York, most famously its series featuring the cruel man playing tricks on little kids to illustrate the unfair practices of the banking industry.

This one, called "Interview" has great writing, casting and acting.



What does the spot do, other than make you laugh? It sticks the term "raise your rate CD" in your head, for one, through the hilarious (if totally inexplicable) interviewer's inability to hear the statement, thus necessitating its repetition.

It also positions Ally as "on your level," not talking down to you; the bank doing humor instead of the other two templates available to banks: feel-good-happy-life-remodel-your-home-get-a-college-loan...or... will-you-have-enough-money-when-it's-time-to-retire-you-should-be-scared.

The tag, "Do you love your bank?" has an obvious answer. Who does? It's a nice little seed of doubt to plant in the heads of all of us who hate our banks.