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Bumper crop of banks try to crack the market.

Publication: Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News
Publication Date: 05-NOV-06 		Format: Online
Delivery: Immediate Online Access

Article Excerpt
Byline: Peter Hull

Nov. 5--There was a time when shoppers bought flour, cheese and beans in unmarked containers. Then companies such as Heinz and Kraft came along, stuck labels on the fronts and turned the commodities into brands.

Even though the contents were similar, the colorful labels made the products inside more distinctive, and the term "brand loyalty" was born.

The same is true for banks.

Back in the day, many communities were served by only one lender, said Steven Sessions, a brand and marketing specialist and president of the SessionsGroup in Houston.

Those days are gone. In Charleston's increasingly crowded financial services industry, smaller community banks rub shoulders with some of the country's largest powerhouses, each angling in ways large and small to stand apart from the crowd.

Sessions said a bank that is viewed as no different than its competition could be in trouble.

"A lot of times, what people are buying is not necessarily the commodity in the can," he said.

The banking business in Charleston -- and in South Carolina's other coastal real estate hotbeds, for that matter -- is...

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