Jack's Blog

The past three years I have had the wonderful opportunity to work as an intern at Flagstar Bank in Troy, MI. Flagstar is a regional bank with branches located in Michigan (lower and upper peninsula), Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin. They compete nationally for mortgage origination with Quicken Loans, which generates most of their revenue.

Fall of 2015, Flagstar had a major problem with brand recognition (aided and unaided). They then decided to launch a brand, something for people to know them by. They called this brand “Craft.” It was not the brand they wanted to go with, but it was the one that customers found (after several surveys) fit best. This brand represents the idea that Flagstar doesn’t push products on people (like Wells or other corporations), instead, they take their time in crafting the perfect solution for their customer. This is one of their commercials, notice how the commercial starts without involving the bank but focuses on time and effort put into creating a product. They then transition to the bank and their moto. They spread this idea of craftsmanship all over their social media and internet presence (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and their Website). They use their social media platforms very similarly, promoting customer care and their attention to their customer’s needs. Take their last tweet for example, they are trying to reach out and help their customer base when they go on vacations. Things like this help promote that they look beyond a quota or incentive and value the customer’s needs and worries.

What’s great about this brand is that it isn’t just something they talk about. This post here discusses how Flagstar wants to “spur economic development” in Pontiac. They invested $10 million into the city, touching various areas of interest. Flagstar doesn’t just want to tell you that they care, they show you. They rarely pass up an opportunity to do right by their community and by their customers. Look at this tweet, for example, Flagstar Bank donated to the Associated Churches Military Families program. As you can see sometimes by Flagstar Doing something that fits with their brand, others will write, or post about it giving Flagstar a way to reach new audiences. That being said, they still need to reach more people.

The most expensive move that Flagstar made with their brand was partnering with the Detroit Pistons (Summer 2017) and eventually partnering with Blake Griffin (Early 2019). This led to a huge increase in sports media leverage for them. They showed up on post-game interviews, Piston’s flyers, Pistons Instagram posts, anything with a Pistons jersey they are on. Go to the Pistons website and right at the top it says “Crafted by Flagstar.” This was huge for them to get their name out and increase brand awareness. Things were looking good.

Last fall, they acquired 52 branches from Wells Fargo. This about doubled their branches and created a lot of work for themselves. During the conversion, Wells customers that were becoming Flagstar customers were very confused, many had never heard of Flagstar before. This tweet, though a little vulgar, perfectly depicts what I would expect from a customer who was notified of the conversion. The customer clearly doesn’t know what Flagstar is and immediately wants to switch banks. A lot of people don’t trust clothes they don’t know the brand of, let alone where they put their money.

This next post highlights how well the rest of that Wells acquisition went. Terribly. The marketing department said it was the highest amount of negative feedback received from social media ever recorded for them. This clip from a local news station provides a little coverage on what exactly was happening. Flagstar was getting some more brand awareness, but it was not in a positive light. Sandro DiNello (CEO), eventually came out and apologized saying they are working hard to make things right and it helped, but the problems had happened and you can’t rewrite history. Many of the new customers had issues with the app as well. Flagstar has two apps when they really should only have one. This is confusing and on top of that, their apps aren’t very well put together. They have poor reviews and this is probably what aligns worst with the craft brand. It doesn’t put the idea forward that their tools are sharp and their hands are steady like they say in the commercial.

They are still working to overcome this issue, and have seen a decreasing amount of negative social content on their behalf. At the end of the day, they remain true to their brand. They continue to push informative and helpful articles to their followers on social media. Doing things in their community to create more publicity and reach new audiences. Appearing on the Pistons jerseys, commercials, posts, etc. Their next step needs to be consolidating and improving their apps. Then they can continue to push content to their customers and avoid negative feedback.

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