In a world polluted by banal messages it is annoyingly hard to find great cases of “marketing as service.” So today, I’m pleased to offer two reasonable good examples, fresh off the pages of this week’s AdAge.

The first comes from an interview with the new CMO of Wachovia, Ranjana B. Clark, who naturally initiated an agency review shortly after her arrival. [Start of rant–why is it that new CMO’s insist on conducting agency reviews? In this case, Mullen did a particularly brilliant job over the last 7 years helping to grow that brand. I suppose it is simply a question of “what have you done for me lately?” but what about all the cumulative knowledge and expertise they potentially offered?–end of rant] As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, this otherwise smart-sounding CMO of Wachovia, has determined that “American’s don’t save [and] have too much debt” and that a bank like hers needs to address these problems substantively:

The way we gain consumer trust is by truly listening and responding to our customers. … Our latest product introduction, “Way to Save,” is a way to help customers get into the savings habit. … We make it easy and we make it fun, and we make it possible for people who are either not in the habit of saving, or have very little to save, to begin.

This is the essence of marketing as service. It’s not enough to talk the talk (that’s marketing as message). You also have to walk the walk (that’s marketing as service). If this isn’t clear enough, consider Purina’s new website called PetCharts:

The site capitalizes on one of the universal truths of the web: People love pet content, especially funny cat photos or user-generated videos of pets at play. But the site also capitalizes on another one of the web’s universal truths: that when it comes to that pet content, 90% of it is bad. The goal for PetCharts is to help people find the good stuff.

Purina is performing a genuine service for its customers and in process should help them stand out of the pack of pet food marketers. Lest you think I’m alone in the praise of this approach, consider this quote from AdAge:

“This is really smart because the marketer is actually trying to give something valuable to the consumer in the context of how you create value on the web,” said Scott Karp, CEO of Publish2, an aggregation service aimed at journalists. “The web is a fantastic information medium and what the marketer is doing is giving the consumer relevant information.”

Wachovia’s new “Way to Save” product could help its customers save money, an offering that could be particularly helpful to the newly indebted. Purina’s new site could help its customers save time finding the best pet photos, a pursuit that only true dog lovers can understand and appreciate. In both cases, customers and marketers are well-served.

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