it's all gone a bit northern rock

So northern rock are seemingly in a bad place. I thought this was all a bit exagerated but in a cab earlier I saw a long line of people lined up outside a branch and presume not many of them were there to open new savings accounts...

And its got me thinking, what does all this tell us? Thought I'd offer up a few thoughts on this below.

1) People love a crisis (and love a queue) - it reminded me a bit of the petrol crisis from a few years back. You see a long queue and are very tempted to get into it. There is also a real sense that time / money is literally running out. Shows how brands have such success with limiting supplies of new products / tickets.

2) People are incredibly conservative / cautious with their money - quite obviously. Maybe I don't have enough savings (any?) to appreciate what it means to people to potentially lose a large chunk of cash but loads of experts and the govt have all reassured people. Effectively each person in the queue was saying "I am incredibly conservative, I'm not risking losing anything, I don't trust the govt and northern rock to sort this out". Makes you appreciate how important reassurance and stability are for many brands and many people (and explains how Volvo ever sell any cars)

3) Social movements are incredibly contagious - especially physical ones. I have no idea how many of Northern Rocks customers have actually withdrawn their money but just physically seeing them lined up outside was incredibly compelling. I suppose there could only have been 30 people lined up outside the branch but as a symbol of what that represents it was significant.

4) People will respond - I've worked with many brands where the obvious consumer barrier seems to be disinterest, irrelevance and apathy. You start to wonder if this is a reflection of consumers in general and whether increasingly its just getting harder to motivate people to do stuff. But this shows people will very much get off their arses and do something if you can make it important / compelling enough for them!

5) For God's sake do something!
Where is Northern Rock's crisis management strategy? Where is the PR? Where is the announcement ad in the press? (have I missed it?) where is the interview with the chief exec on youtube? Where is the mobilisation of social media? (because people have already demonstrated that they are incredibly interested in this and willing to seek information out). Where is the response frankly? What is their strategy? You can imagine if this happened to a brand like Virgin Branson would be on the news within minutes reassuring everyone.

Latest is that shares are down 42%. I'm very tempted to buy some. But I'm obviously far too conservative...