Banks’ Images: Evidence from Advertising Videos
This paper examines how banks strategically develop brand images and how these efforts influence franchise value and the transmission of monetary policy. Analyzing TV advertisements via video embeddings, we measure banks' images along three dimensions: pricing advantages, service quality, and building trust and emotional connections. Banks with high local market shares highlight service and trust. Banks lacking pricing or service advantages lean on emotional appeals. Banks tailor images to demographics, increasing minority representation in targeted areas. A border discontinuity design helps identify that banks' images affect deposit growth, spreads, and loan demand, leading banks to respond differently to monetary policy.