THE POWER OF SMALL THINKING.

A lot of folks tout being purpose-driven these days because it’s a smart way to future-proof a brand. But how many brands do you know of that have been purpose-driven since 1868?

I can point to one. A five-letter word. F-R-O-S-T. 

Frost was different from any bank I’d ever worked on. Refreshingly so. Because they were human. They believed in something. Something it was hard to believe any bank still believed in. 

Frost believed in probity.

Probity. Yeah, it's a word.

From its humble beginnings in 1868 (that’s before the invention of Levi's, folks), Frost embraced probity. A word I’d never heard of until I became the ECD of McGarrah Jessee, a then 35-person agency with a roster of small accounts with an appetite for getting noticed.

My main client at Frost Bank was Pam Thomas, one of the most gracious individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Pam did more to make me appreciate her business than any client I'd worked with in years.

 I soon morphed from having to work on a bank, to getting to work on one. 

PAm and I had an understanding, We didn’t create ads that acted like a high-minded bank or spoke like one. We created our own language. A human one. A relatable voice that said what few other banks credibly could. 

We care more about people and ethics than quarterly profits.

What McGarrah Jessee needed to do was disrupt a category previously defined by boilerplate statistics, numbers of locations, predatory interest rates, and countless promises of free checking accounts and other customer-baiting trinkets like free toasters. 

Frost didn’t get caught up in that meaningless crap and neither did we.

I understood probity because I was raised by it. My dad was the walking definition of the word. A class act, who never took cheap shots at competitors, whether they deserved it or not. Forgive the cliche, but my father and Frost were cut from the cloth.

Here was my chance to prove that a bit of it rubbed off on me in spite of myself, as a result of the mentorship my father provided to me in healthy adult doses.

Enough about fathers and sons. Let's discuss finances.

Throughout its history, Frost had developed an uncanny knack for recognizing when an investment, no matter how ridiculously profitable it was, was too risky to bet someone else’s money on.

McGarrah Jessee had to find a way to tell the probity story in a believable, consumer-facing fashion.

So, we complimented haircuts, reminded people that manners mattered, talked BBQ and buried golf legends. We questioned the free-toaster tactics being employed to get folks to switch banks. We got Willie to sing for us without the legendary singer/songwriter looking like a shill. We playfully poked fun at a category that had ceased to stand for much. We even stood on soapboxes in cornfields and talked about what it meant to be a Texan from the mouth of a kid.

And then one day, it happened.

An economic meltdown of global proportions.

 In 2007, a combination of rising home prices, fast and loose lending practices, and an upsurge in subprime mortgages pushed real estate prices off the cliff. 

The whole damn thing imploded. And most lending institutions were caught with their hands in the fiduciary cookie jar.

Not Frost. They've abandoned the subprime scheme years prior, realizing it was fiscally unsustainable and bordered on unethical. 

As other banks looked to the government to bail them out, Frost didn’t need help. They’d survived the market crash nearly unscathed because they stood for something more than profitability. 

Frost stood for "probity".

How does one talk about probity after the Texas sky has fallen?

Bank was suddenly as very bad word. While everyone else played the blame game, we ran a series of ads that leaned into Frost’s core values.

After launching the ad campaign, it dawned on us that there was a less expected way of getting the word out than our print ads in Texas Monthly and the regional edition of the Wall Street Journal. We needed to write a book to reacquaint the consumer with a concept Frost had never lost sight of. W

e needed to bring "probity" back into the collective conscience.

"What we believe", the paperback.

We looked at Frost’s core values as a chance to make a real statement. We created a booklet that looked a lot like the bank passbooks from back in the day, and we called it “What We Believe.”

Rather than talking about what others did wrong, we stuck to what Frost had always done right. Twelve pages of irrefutable truths about why Frost had survived what threw just about everyone other institution for a loss.

We told the story of probity simply and without mealy-mouthed legal disclaimers. The little books were booger-glued into issues of Texas Monthly and soon found their way into the hands of people who were genuinely intrigued that any bank actually gave a (insert your favorite bleepable word here) about integrity and well-being of people's nest eggs. 

The reveal of who was behind the booklets was withheld until the very last interior panel.

It went something like this:

PROBITY TRAVELS FAST. OR, THE LITTLE BOOK THAT DID.

Hundreds of requests poured in from unexpected places. College ethics professors were clamoring for copies. Sunday school teachers wanted to pass the books out to children. Even Dick Evans, the straight-talking CEO of Frost Bank, carried the booklets in his jacket pocket in lieu of business cards. 

“What We Believe” went on to become an outdoor campaign, a digital series, a handful of testimonial web films. and ambient work. Playful messaging was even projected upon Frost’s headquarters in San Antonio every evening driving folks to a web experience featuring Frost's "believers".

Frost’s belief system was even committed to cocktail napkins at the Moody Theater, where Austin City Limits performances are broadcast live before audiences every Sunday night.

Point is, No medium was too small for Frost's probity message.

Without relying on a big media buy or a ton of traditional media, Frost’s story spread throughout the state, and can now be found in marketing textbooks. Aww, shucks. I count it as one of my greatest accomplishments. Not bad, for what began as a subtle little book of beliefs with nary a logo on its cover.

Frost subsequently gained a flood of new customers who wholeheartedly agreed with their take on treating people right. I’ll say it just one more time. Probity. 

These days, everyone is looking for brands to do more and be more than just money-making entities trying to hit their quarterly projections, It’s nice to know there are still a few brands out there that are doing it the old fashioned way.

If you’re that kind of brand, I’m your kind of problem-solver.  

Cameron Day is currently Chief Creative Mentor for Amelie Company in Denver, Colorado, a small agency with a purpose, passion, and legit reason for being, beyond merely making money. As of July 1st, Cameron will be available to tell your brand’s story as the wily, battle-tested half of Two-Headed Cam, a father/son ideation service specializing in rapid ideation and problem solving that helps brands find and tell their stories by whatever means and medium necessary. Don’t hesitate to reach out to Amélie Company, or Two-headed Cam, if either can be of service. 

FROST AGENCY CREDIT: McGarrah Jessee, Austin, TX; GCD/WRITERS: James Mikus and Cameron Day; ART DIRECTION: Michael Anderson and James Mikus.