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September 29, 2008
For WaMu, the right words were not enough
As communicators, we spend a lot of time and energy searching for just the right words—the words that will get people’s attention and encourage them to take action.
But, as Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Bill Virgin points out, sometimes words are not enough. In a poignant piece on the downfall of Washington Mutual, Mr. Virgin writes that although words helped the bank during its growth, words failed the company at the end.
“So much of Washington Mutual's legacy in recent memory was tied to its message,” Mr. Virgin writes. “Longtime Seattleites can remember the ‘friend of the family’ image as a hometown, homespun institution, backed with such signatures as its school savings plan.
“More recently, as WaMu under Killinger pursued dreams of being a coast-to-coast consumer financial-services giant (one of the very few in the country), the company's message took on a tone of irreverence, of being unbankerly.”
But, when things went awry, even the best words didn’t work. “In the end, a company that had traveled so far and so long on the words it used to tell customers and investors who and what it was, ran out of the right words to convince regulators it should be given enough time to prove it could back up its story.”
Sad, isn’t it?
Posted by Alison Davis at September 29, 2008 11:34 AM