I saw a billboard advertising Scottish Widows. No, it’s not a bizarre escort service. Rather, it appears to be a pension (superannuation) fund. The marketing is what bewilders me. Why is the website (and their billboards) plastered with pictures of pretty young things wearing black and red satin cloaks? And the alluring gazing? I dunno… the image seems more suited to promoting a vampire movie or Gothic fashion, not retirement savings for biddy grey-haired Scottish women who have lost their husbands to the vagaries of war.
They probably thought that to appeal to a wider market than Scottish widows, they have to glam things up.
I think it’s weird.
Did you read the “Our Brand” section on their website?
It’s not particularly enlightening, but I thought it odd that they had that section at all. And the section on their advertising and the current Scottish Widow.
Two words.
Sex sells. 🙁
It doesn’t look like it’s about sex though. If it was about sex, they might’ve used red and black lingerie.
I think it’s about richness. The black velvet is for the widow-ness, but the red satin is about richness. The woman is the refined widow. She can afford to be refined, because Scottish Widows has been good with her money.
Ok I got all excited about visiting this website and I found it extremely dull. The only photos I found were of some old financial executives and that didn’t do anything for me at all.
I kept reading it as Scottish ‘Windows’ btw, which was even weirder. Microsoft has brainwashed me.
It took a bit of work to find the Our Brand section but I got it in the end.
The ‘Scottish Widow’ seems to be a fabrication, a deliberate marketing strategy to make the brand memorable. That seems a little dodgy to me. I’d understand if it started off being a pension for Scottish widows but the brand was not developed in such an organic way.
Mmm, no, it says in the history that
In March 1812, a number of eminent Scotsmen gathered in the Royal Exchange Coffee Rooms in Edinburgh, to consider setting up ‘a general fund for securing provisions to widows, sisters and other females’
So it’s not dodgy…