I’ve seen ads for ING Financial Services for a little while now, but I’ve never seen them use the ING as an ending for related gerunds that would work well as positive propaganda for their services, such as: SavING, InvestING, PlannING, RetirING with confidence, etc. They could have the ING stationary on the screen, and switch in different prefixes to create words that would relate to what they do for their customers. I think that might work pretty well as a campaign concept for this company, even if it’s just at the end of the spots. (Maybe they’ve done this in the past and I haven’t seen it?) But I suppose if they did that, people could make fun of and ridicule them and their ads, saying: CheatING, BilkING, ScammING, etc. But the funny thing is, I always think of that as a joke whenever I see their ads anyway, because of the ING company name, so why not at least use the ING to their advantage if it’s right there in their name already?
I can’t help but think of stuff like that, making fun of company names, etc., especially with regard to their corporate image and advertising. Like with UBS, they used to have an ad that said: “You and US: UBS” And then I’d say: “We BS U: UBS” (The “U” in “We BS U” meaning “You”, as in: they bullshit you. And with “BS” in their initials, it’s hard not to have that come to mind, especially in banking and law stuff.) And I guess it’s better to avoid such obvious make-fun-of-able stuff, but what if making things that are easy to rip on makes people remember the company more and then leads to more business for the company? I think that’s the idea behind the Geico ads, because they’re really annoying and easy to bash, but they just keep on doing them, so they must be working somehow. Right?
Anyway, here’s an example of some of ING’s advertising. They use a number of different visual things for identification purposes, like an orange ball, people carrying around their ideal retirement amount in a number, etc., but none of these things really makes me think specifically of ING nearly as well as using a gerund concept would, at least in my opinion. But like I said, maybe they’ve done this already? I would just have thought they might want to keep on using it, like the Shift_(whatever word/phrase they’re using) for Nissan, or the “Zoom zoom!” for Mazda, which they’ve both been using for years and years by now. So anyway, here are some examples of the ING spots:
