Big Banks to Try Putting on Lipstick

The Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies on behalf of around 100 of the country's top banks, credit card companies and insurance firms, will undertake a professionally-organized public relations campaign to try to improve the tarnished image of the financial industry. The campaign will portray the industry as trustworthy and positive, and is scheduled to start at the same time the mid-term election season ramps up. Three major PR firms are leading the campaign: APCO Worldwide (which has done work for the tobacco industry, Luntz, Maslanski Strategic Research (formerly headed by discredited pollster Frank Luntz), and the DDB Advertising company. The campaign will focus on setting up a Web site and working through other social media, like Facebook and Twitter, to try and demonstrate the "positive benefits" the industry brings to consumers lives and the economy. A Bloomberg National Poll found that about 56 percent of Americans would support government action to limit the compensation of financial employees who helped cause the global financial meltdown, or to even ban those people from working in the industry.