In 1992, a merger between NCNB Corp. with C&S/Sovran led to the birth of Nations Bank, USA, as a $119 billion institution. The newly formed bank decided to use internal marketing to send a message to its employees. Nations Bank chose an advertising campaign to communicate its message to its employees.

The cost for a 90-second advertising slot was close to $600 000. The advert went out during this year's Orange Bowl football game, broadcast nationally by NBC on New Year's Day. While this is a large sum of money for any advert, it was a particularly large sum when the target audience was only 58 000 people. For Nations Bank it was worth the expense to send a message to employees that the bank was committed to lending to the local community. Before the game's airing, all Nations Bank employees were urged to ‘invite [Chairman] Hugh McColl into your living rooms’.

The advert was only a small part of Nations Bank's effort to help employees understand their new company, where it is going and how they fit into its future. Internal marketing has proved to be a vital component in mega-bank mergers. The reason is simple: before two companies officially combine and launch a marketing campaign aimed at the general public, their employees must have a unified vision of why the merger is good. Rusty Rainey, the NationsBank executive vice president, who came from NCNB and is handling the merger transition, explained: ‘You market to your customers through your employees, so your employees come first.’

Another internal marketing action, one that Rainey considers the most important element in managing the transition successfully, was when NCNB arranged for its senior officers to visit C&S/Sovran employees at all levels. NCNB first used this tactic in 1988, when its bid for First Republic Bank Corp. was accepted by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.; NCNB dispatched 200 top-level employees to every First Republic Bank office in Texas and sent yellow roses to its 15 000 new employees.

Personal appearances by senior executives were an essential part of the internal marketing of the merger. During the 2 months following its August merger announcement, NCNB's chairman High McColl travelled across the South to visit with C&S/Sovran and NCNB bankers, and returned with pockets full of business cards on which employees had scrawled questions regarding the merger; the questions were later answered in employee publications. With these visits, Rainey notes, McColl was saying: ‘I care enough to come to your place and meet you.’

Source: Faber, D. (1992). A pitch for togetherness. Institutional Investor, 26 (3), March, 22.