Cowen on ... Abbey National. (Opinion).(Brief Article)(Editorial)

You don't have to be a genius, or a cynic, to notice the obvious debt Abbey National's relaunch owes to a particular high-street rival. In fact, the link between Halifax's singing bank clerks and the arrival of Abbey's performing customers is so retina-scorchingly obvious that it tends to obscure the equally significant differences between the two campaigns.

First among these is the attitude that each takes to the relationship between brand and product advertising. The real revelation in the Halifax ads wasn't that bankers could sing but that the details of financial services, with all their numbers and percentage signs, could be wrapped up in enthusiastic, FMCG-style branding. There was a finely judged payoff at work, with the detail giving traction to the friendly glitz and the general silliness allowing customers to look at the numbers long enough to digest them.

The Abbey approach takes a more traditional view of financial services branding -- that putting your vision and personality out there is a separate exercise to telling customers about interest rates. Life's complicated enough without clouding your mission statement with such information. So, for now, Euro RSCG W nek Gosper has served up a series of vignettes in which the endline is the only real connection to Abbey. The product messages will be left to a second wave of ads, breaking in six weeks, and to the press work that traditionally triggers mortgage purchases or current account moves.

Within this gameplan, the current spots perform their task perfectly capably. They're cheeky and uplifting and there's something of the charm of amateur dramatics or school plays in the way that the gallant performers almost measure up to the production values around them.

After all, it's a far harder task to perform a script than it is to knock out a karaoke-style number with real gusto. And this isn't the only disadvantage that Euro RSCG's recruits have, compared with Howard and company. There isn't the ...