Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Big Bank Dabbles In Irony




Maybe I'm looking into this too much, but I can't help but be bemused by The National Australia Bank's decision to abbreviate to 'nab'. The bank has seen it's share of troubles over the last few years, too boring to go into here, the name change seems ironically appropriate. My dictionary defines 'nab' as to snatch or seize suddenly or without knowledge. I don't know if I'd have a lot of confidence putting my money into an institution so named. Perhaps it's meant to be social commentary on those sudden bank fees that seem to hit my account if I go anywhere near an ATM machine? Or the sudden massive layoffs of bank employees that are becoming an all too common occurrence? If that's the case I've got to praise them on their honesty at least.

The logo with it's all lowercase letters is an odd looking mark as well, inelegant to look at and to say - 'nab'? Roll that over your tongue a few times, this is an improvement over 'The National'? At least that carried some authority. I'm sure a lot of money was thrown at it to come up with this, so obviously I'm crazy and the nab's coffers will overflow with the milk and honey of the re-branding success. Now I'm going to go 'nab' me some lunch.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Looks like they were trying to jump on the ANZ bandwagon to me. With a bit of 'lowercase is friendlier' thrown in as an afterthought. Reversing the logo out of black looks no more welcoming than the new name!

1:54 PM  

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