Just came across Umair’s blog today and wanted to reference it. He is beginning a discussion on corporate DNA and branding. Quite fascinating …. the decaying brands he isolates are Microsoft [tried to control the product standards], and Starbucks [tried to control the value chain].
Umair Haque
Google and Myspace are perhaps the most obvious; Craigslist and Wikipedia the most radical; and Zara perhaps the least well understood. What all of these players have in common is that, as embryonic revolutionaries growing up in an era of turbulence, they’ve developed radically different DNA.
So of course, I am thinking about how this conversation can be carried over to Banks.
Bankwatch 
I think banks will have to re-think what their core brand is all about. We have become consumed with metrics that don’t measure up to a customers experience. More and more customers will turn to the bank’s website as the primary source of interaction, companies Haque mentioned such as Google that grew out of the web turbulence have a better start than those who fought against it – banks will eventually HAVE to take the plunge and jump in to web 2.0 technology…
Great post! I wanted add that the companies that have grown up in the age of turbulence have also grown up in an age of conversation, engagement and individual participation. Their very business models are based on these concepts.
Banks are way behind when it comes to engaging with the customer and co-creating new kinds of value with the customer. Of course, their value chain isn’t like the value chain of the a consumer products company and their security issues are paramount within the context of customer relationship. That said, Banks do have one key asset that very few other consumer focused organizations have and that’s retail space.
All those empty offices and conference rooms in branch banks could be put to good use in creating community (seminars, classses, meetups). It’s an asset just waiting to be leveraged.