To do something more than once and expect a different result is to be insane.

You’ve probably read about it, but its clearly the case, round 1: NAB Spam bloggers, round 2: NAB lie to the world.

Round 1: NAB SPAM BLOGGERS

I’m amazed that this hapenned, but you can read about it more here…

http://www.duncanriley.com/2008/06/16/nab-spams-blogs-australia-blog-owners-need-to-change-banks/

http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DyWEQgeMi6aQ

And watch an interview the NAB Spokesperson who defends herself… hah!

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=KHwgI4e0VH4 

Round 2: NAB LIE TO THE WORLD

Following this massively negative PR exercise and have shown a disconnect between them and the community, they continued to stuff up… I thought they would’ve learnt, wouldn’t you?

They’ve come up with a fantastic idea, to create a place where people can talk about how banks should work in the future, fantastic idea! However, its been undermined because they’ve had NAB staff posting positive comments about Ubank on the site… pretending to be happy customers. This frustrated everyone and generated so much negative publicity that NAB remove the site.

You can read about it here

http://silkcharm.blogspot.com/2008/10/nab-ubank-social-media-mess.html
http://freshchat.com.au/ubank-blog-closed-after-social-media-outs-fake-posters/

I hope the team at NAB will finally wake up and realise they can’t keep treating the social community like children. 

Learnings / takeaways

1. Don’t lie (duh)
2. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not
3. Be relevant
4. Listen and respond

Their actions seem so insane that I wonder if one of their competitors are doing setting it up, if so congrats/watch out… but more likely not, and more likely NAB and their advisors don’t get it.

And I have to say I’m surprised because their advertising agency is one of the best in the country, so it couldn’t be them, it must be their PR agency.