Bank's bogeyman advert upsets namesake customer
Bank of Ireland has been forced to rethink its latest big budget ad campaign after inadvertently upsetting a customer, it emerged today.
A new 30 second television ad for mortgage advice originally showed a hairy bogeyman called Derek Whelan hiding under a child’s bed in dire need of a bigger place to live.
But the real Mr Whelan, a long term business customer of the bank, contacted staff concerned about being associated with the grisly looking character.
The ad was changed and the mythical monster now has the more harmless name ’Dave the Bogeyman’.
A BoI spokesman said the change was made as soon as the customer contacted them.
“We had a contact from somebody of the name Derek Whelan who asked us not to use his name.
He had a concern with his name being used and in deference with his sensitivities we had no difficulty in making the change,” the spokesman said.
The ad was first aired at the start of last week and ran for several days before being changed.
BoI insisted, however, relations with Mr Whelan remain strong despite the hiccup.
“We had done it in all good faith in trying to make the point that even though we were dealing with mythical characters the issues are real,” he said.
“We created the names, obviously there was no intention to identify any people.”
The Dave the Bogeyman ad is part two of a three ad series for Irish TV viewers.
But being careful not to make the same mistake twice BoI has decided to only use first names for the final instalment of the trilogy.
“We have changed the names on all the ads to use the first name only,” the BoI spokesman added.
