From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans

CHAPTER 13

Be an Advocate

In the late 1990s, when Arkadi Kuhlmann launched what would later become the largest US savings bank, ING Direct, he had a surprising message for the nation’s millionaires: We don’t want your money.¹ While the bank had no minimum deposit rules, it did have a maximum: No million-dollar accounts were allowed.

At the time of its launch, ING Direct was a David among Goliaths, a scrappy upstart in a stodgy, commoditized business that was dominated by a handful of large financial institutions.² Given the challenges ING Direct faced in accumulating assets and growing its business, why would Kuhlmann go out of his way to establish policies that barred large deposits from wealthy individuals—many of whom, no doubt, would have ...