Ally Financial

Sunday's Detroit Paper and Sunday's New York Times each published page after page of advertisements for Ally Financial. This is the former GMAC financial corporation that dates from 1913. I think that Ally is about the fourth largest financial holding company in the country and is, I believe, headquartered in the Philip Johnson Comerica building near Campus Martius.
What is Ally Financial trying to do with that expensive advertising? They do not tell you how to set up an account at thier large on-line bank. They do not tell you what number to
call if you want to originate a mortgage loan or a new car loan. Nor do those advertisements tell you how to uses their brokerage services. What is the aim of these advertisements?
Having lived in southeast Michigan since the 1960s, I have
heard dozens of call for Michigan to diversify its economic base so as to prosper in an era when durable good manufacturing is not sufficient to spur high rates of economic growth. I never imaged that Detroit and southeast Michigan would become a national center for banking and financial services. Three of the nation's largest firms in that industry- Quicken, Ally and Huntington Bank - have their headquarters within walking distance on Woodward and United Wholesale Mortgage - the nation' second largest mortgage originator - is close by in Pontiac.

I noticed that too, two half page ads, one touting their sponsorship of the Detroit City Football Club. My guess is that it is part of an overall branding effort, like what Coke and Nike attempt. Worked for us, right?

And you're right about Metro Detroit becoming a lending center of sorts with Ally, Rocket/Quicken and UWM. It's bit like being somewhat of a pizza center with Dominoes and Little Caesar. We don't just build cars.

I have an account with Ally, it's strictly an on-line bank, no branch offices. They offer one of the highest interest rates of any institution anywhere. I still have my local checking with Chase but keep most of my savings with Ally. I highly recommend them.

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Originally Posted by renf

This is the former GMAC financial corporation that dates from 1913. I think that Ally is about the fourth largest financial holding company in the country and is, I believe, headquartered in the Philip Johnson Comerica building near Campus Martius.

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Ally has building naming rights... the 619 ft. tower is now called the ALLY DETROIT CENTER.

Detroit need to cease being a one horse town

Ally seems to be a "jack of all trades and a master of none". A very large bank no doubt and well diversified from the GMAC days, but I doubt many think of them when it comes to "the company" to use for any given financial need.

Savings? Chase, B of A, Citi
Investing? Fidelity, Schwab, Morgan Stanley
Mortgage? Rocket, Wells, Loan Depot
Personal Loans? Lightstream, SoFi, Marcus

Maybe there are people out there with Ally at the top of these lists but I bet they are few and far between considering they're such an also-ran even in their home town.

Just by the questions posed by the OP it sounds like they are in need of a whole new marketing dept.

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Originally Posted by renf

They do not tell you how to set up an account at thier large on-line bank. They do not tell you what number to
call if you want to originate a mortgage loan or a new car loan.

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For many companies today [[including one that I used to work for), getting phone calls is a BAD THING. Phone calls cost money. We actually used the volume of phone calls we received as a barometer for how well our website was performing. If you're getting lots of calls, you must be doing a crappy job of building easy to use online tools. And quite frankly as a consumer, I don't want to call anyway. I don't want to wait on hold, navigate some phone tree, have to slowly read all of my information to a person, etc.

If they described the services offered, I think that's enough. You go to the website, and if it's built well, you'll be off to the races. No instructions or phone numbers needed.

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Originally Posted by renf

What is the aim of these advertisements?

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From what I've read about Ally, they tend to have fewer, larger account holders. Banking regulators like banks to have a *lot* of accounts, to keep some risk ratio of account holders to bank holdings balanced or something. They probably need to shore up their numbers to keep the banking regulators happy.