Like supermarkets, banks must offer choices
Gorham Savings Bank seems to embody the pace and type of growth banks are seeing recently.
It recently opened its long-anticipated branch and office space in the historic Grand Trunk building, at 1 India St. in Portland. The branch features an interactive teller machine, which looks like an ATM but offers via touchscreen automatic dial-in to a customer service representative located at the bank's customer service center in Gorham, as well as features like a “technology bar,” where customers can use laptops or devices. Yet the branch, within the solid confines of historic bricks and mortar, can still offer a personal touch, Christopher Emmons, president and CEO, tells Staff Writer Laurie Schreiber for our cover story.
“Once our customers become familiar with [the interactive teller machine], they find it very accessible, and they still enjoy the interaction of dealing with a real person,” Emmons says.
As banks balance the demands of offering the latest technology while still having a physical presence, Christopher Pinkham, president of the Maine Bankers Association, offers Laurie's story some valued perspective:
“Twenty-five years ago, there was telephone banking,” Pinkham says. “As the web came in, we offered online banking. As mobile became standard, we rolled out mobile. The earliest ATMs only delivered cash. Currently there are smart ATMs that have replaced whole physical branches. The next generation that's arrived in a couple of places in Maine is the kiosk, with a TV screen, and you're looking at a teller who's in a central location. I'm not sure anyone has the corner on where this is headed, other than everyone's scrambling to ensure they have many available channels.”
Heard on Main Street
Advertising has been big news of late. VIA Agency, Maine's largest agency, won the L.L.Bean account, displacing an agency from Greenville, S.C., Erwin Penland. The retailer also recently launched a major campaign to promote its “small-batch” L.L.Bean boots. In a one-week stretch in the New York Times, it had a pull-out advertisement, a full-page ad in the magazine section and a full page on the back of the “Styles” section. The company still makes the boots in Maine, in Brunswick and Lewiston. It reportedly sold 600,000 pairs of the iconic boots last year, according to Business Insider, and hopes to produce 1 million pairs by 2018 … In the media industry, there's been some buzz about the sale of WABI, the Bangor television station, which is a CBS affiliate. Gray Television Inc. paid $85 million to Diversified Broadcasting Inc. and Community Broadcasting Service, which holds the license for WABI, also acquiring WCJB, an ABC affiliate in Gainesville, Fla. According to the S&P Global Market Intelligence report, it was the first major TV deal in 2017.
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