Yeepee! LCL is really a great bank with stellar customer service compared to the Crédit Lyonnais that it was until this week. Customers won’t notice. And let’s kill a brand with more than a century of history in the process (certainly not an asset in retail banking).

I’m astonished by the lack of serious of large institutions in that regard. What kind of groupthink and logic is behind this?

I don’t know if this is a French problem or not, but recently, the SNCF (our monolithic prehistoric train state company) decided to change logo. I talked to several people around me and we all liked the old logo better. But I guess it’s easier for them to put a new sticker on every train than making them arrive on time every time.

Still, one of the first lessons of our core marketing course was about product orientation vs. customer orientation. So maybe what France needs is more MBAs and less Polytechnic graduates at key positions… ;)

Note: a last but older example is the state body in charge of unemployment (ANPE) which has changed its logo on several occasions in the last decade while what its “customers” want is just to help them find a job (at least officially, because this is a more delicate subject).

Update: FeedDemon’s creator Nick Bradbury claims that “one way or another, customers will talk to you”, citing the example of iTunes users who “are creating iMixes for the sole purpose of letting Apple know which bands they want added to iTunes”. FeedDemon is an RSS aggregator so you have to moderate Nick’s point of view: France or non-pure tech services industries are not there yet (no digital feedback right in your face). And I doubt me posting (in English!) about the issue will raise a red flag anywhere.