Is it Just Me, or is This Rebranding REALLY Dumb

In the mid-80s, a new local bank opened in these parts: The Bank of Western Massachusetts. Its whole ocre identity was as a business bank that understood doing business in Western Massachusetts. and as more and more small local banks got swallowed up by regional and national conglomerates, that was a powerful USP.

So I was pretty shocked to flip through my local paper and see an ad proudly proclaiming a change of the Haydenville branch to “Legacy Banks.” Hmmm…take a strong regional identity, throw it away, and replace it with something that means “what you leave behind when you die.”

So I did some Web surfing. It seems that Bank of Western Mass is actually becoming part of something called People’s United Bank, which is not the same as the existing People’s Bank or United Bank (both long-established brands around here. People’s United is a consortium of six banks from around New England. Perhaps it’s selling off some units in order to raise money for the merger. Then I went to Legacy Bank, where I discovered that this entity started as the Lee National Bank in 1835 and has seven locations each in Berkshire County (the westernmost part of Massachusetts) and the neighboring portion of New York State, going into Albany. Neither website says anything about the shift of the Haydenville branch, and quite frankly, the newspaper ad is pathetic. the headline is “smart banking comes to Haydenville” (yes, that’s how it was capitalized), the copy tells me basically nothing about why this is smart, and then it mentions the name change.

Forgive me if I don’t see the logic.