This is not a bank – it’s a tv station!

  • Jon Lund 

Denmark’s got itself a brand new TV channel. Fulfledged with modern TV-equipment, studios, reporters, producers and a host of experts waiting to comment on news as they happen. A TV channel with the outspoken ambitions to become “the largest financial TV station in Denmark”.

The recently opened TV station is web-based and produces continuously on a daily basis a number of features.

The business model behind the TV channel is somewhat unusual, however. It has no advertisement breaks and no advertising incomes. It isn’t premium – subscriptionbased – either.

To understand why the TV channel nevertheless might turn out succesfull I’ll have to share a littel secret with you: the publisher of the TV-channel isn’t a publisher in the traditional sense. No – the publisher is the third largest bank in Denmark, Jyske Bank. And the tv-channel is jyskebank.tv.

Cesi n’est pas une banque
Is Jyske Bank a bank – or is it a tv-channel? Here I’ve parafrased Magrittes “ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe). Large version: Jyske Bank TV – ceci n’est pas une banque 

In the words of Jyske Bank themselves, jyskebank.tv is financed largely by the savings accomplished by abandoning the traditional printed customermagazine, mailings etc. The TVchannel however serves one more probably vital aspect for Jyske Bank: it’s a branding vehicle. Branding not as in “we give you a lot of nice colours to look at and create a feel-good atmosphere” but rather as in “we’ll put the cards on the table and show you what we’ve got, what we know and how we think – and we’ll hope this will make you gain confidence in us”. And – in the nature of a TVchannel – this show-down isn’t a one-off, but is carried out continously, day after day, (hopefully) bearing wittness to the ability of Jyske Bank to perform over time.

This isn’t the first corporate web-TVchannel. Not in the world (pioneered Tommy Hilfiger tommytv.com – and not in Denmark (Danish defense TV www.forsvarskanalen.dk); Carlsbergs partofthegame.tv. But it’s probably the most whole-hearted “I want to be a real media” I’ve come across. To parafrase Magritte one’s almost tempted to state “ceci n’est pas une banque”.