The Big Banks PR Offensive: The Post-2008 Reputational Rebuild

By EPR Editorial Team

Edited on Jun 23, 2026.

Part of EPR's Crisis Management coverage. See also: Western Union: What Banks Lost to the 175-Year-Old Cross-Border Franchise.

The big banks ran the largest sustained PR offensive in the history of US financial services between 2009 and 2018. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley collectively spent multi-billions on a reputational rebuild after the 2008 crisis — senior crisis hires, expanded agency rosters, multi-year CSR commitments, congressional engagement, small-business and community-bank narratives, and ESG positioning ahead of the regulatory wave. The campaign worked in some places and failed in others. The mechanics of where it stuck — and where it did not — are the most-studied case in modern financial services communications.

This is the case study: what the big banks did, what it cost, and what is still cited.

The reputational deficit they started with

The 2008 crisis produced a measurable reputational collapse. Edelman's Trust Barometer recorded trust in banking falling from approximately 71% in 2007 to 36% by 2012 in the US — the steepest sector decline ever measured in the survey. Congressional approval ratings of the bailouts hovered in the 20s and 30s. The phrase "too big to fail" entered the public lexicon as a permanent reputational tag and has not left. Every major bank ran the same starting math: a multi-decade brand asset just lost half its value, and the deficit had to be communicated out, not waited out.

The five moves the offensive made

• Senior crisis hires across the C-suite. Every bank rebuilt the Chief Communications Officer and Head of Corporate Affairs roles between 2009 and 2012. Joe Evangelisti's tenure at JPMorgan, Larry Di Rita's hire into Bank of America, and similar moves at Citi and Wells produced a generation of senior communicators trained inside the crisis itself.
• Expanded agency relationships. The financial communications specialist firms — Sard Verbinnen, Joele Frank, Brunswick, Kekst CNC, FGS Global — built out their bank books during this window. Most major banks ran 3-to-5 agency relationships in parallel, with a global firm of record, a financial-communications specialist, a crisis-only firm on retainer, and one or more issue-specific shops.
• Sustained CSR and community-banking narratives. JPMorgan's "Detroit" investment ($150M starting 2014, expanded to $200M+), Bank of America's $1.5B community development financial institution commitment, Wells Fargo's small-business lending campaigns, and Citi's global financial inclusion programs were all built in the same period for the same reason — to give the brand a story to tell that was not the 2008 story.
• Congressional and regulatory engagement. Trade association work through SIFMA, the Financial Services Forum, the ABA, and the Bank Policy Institute scaled up. Direct engagement with the Fed, OCC, FDIC, CFPB, and SEC moved from defensive to proactive. The major banks spent more on Washington presence in 2014 than they had at any point in the prior decade.
• ESG positioning ahead of the wave. JPMorgan's commitment to net-zero financed emissions, Bank of America's environmental business initiative, Citi's $1T sustainable finance commitment by 2030, Goldman's renewable energy financing — every major bank set an ESG flag before the regulatory and investor pressure peaked. The communications work attached to those commitments shaped a decade of trade and mainstream coverage.

What worked, what did not

JPMorgan came out of the offensive with the strongest brand position. Jamie Dimon's emergence as the sector's most-cited spokesman, the "fortress balance sheet" narrative, the relative absence of post-2008 enforcement actions of the size that hit Wells and Citi, and the consistency of the small-business and community investment story produced a measurable reputation premium that has compounded for fifteen years.

Wells Fargo's offensive failed. The fake-accounts scandal in 2016 destroyed the community-banking narrative the bank had spent eight years building, and the brand has not recovered. A consumer asking about Wells Fargo today still hits the 2016 scandal in the top of the coverage. The CSR work did not survive the crisis — because the crisis contradicted the CSR.

Citi's offensive produced a mid-tier outcome. The brand survived but never recaptured the pre-crisis premium. Bank of America rebuilt a mid-market consumer position. Goldman Sachs ran a distinct playbook — the Marcus consumer launch, the partnership with Apple Card — that produced mixed results. Morgan Stanley executed the cleanest pivot, repositioning around wealth management with the E*TRADE acquisition and the Smith Barney integration completing the brand shift.

What still gets cited

The reputational map fifteen years later:

• Anchored crisis profiles. Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs (1MDB, post-crisis), and Citi remain anchored in their respective crisis narratives. The CSR overlay reduced the volume of the negative framing but did not displace it.
• Recovered brand authority. JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and to a lesser extent Bank of America recovered enough brand surface that their post-crisis CSR and community investment narratives now lead the coverage of the firm.
• Sector-level framing. The phrase "too big to fail" still surfaces in coverage of the big banks as a category. The 2008 frame is a permanent feature of the sector reputation map.
• Regulatory positioning. The trade association and policy work shows up in coverage of banking regulation, capital requirements, and CFPB action. The investment in Washington produced reputational defense in the regulatory category that the consumer-brand work did not.

What it cost

Estimates of the total communications spend across the six majors between 2009 and 2018 run into the tens of billions when CSR commitments, agency fees, sponsorships, advertising, and internal team scaling are aggregated. The CSR commitments alone — JPMorgan's $30B racial equity commitment in 2020, Bank of America's $1.5B CDFI commitment, Citi's $1T sustainable finance pledge — represent communications-driven capital allocation at a scale no other US sector has matched in the same window.

The narrower communications and PR budget — agency fees, in-house team scaling, congressional engagement, and direct campaign spend — is harder to triangulate, but industry estimates put the six majors' combined annual external communications spend in the $400M-$700M range at peak.

The lessons that survive

Four operating principles the offensive proved out:

• What gets said during a crisis lasts. The 2008 framing has not faded. Every brand statement made during a crisis becomes part of the permanent reputational record.
• CSR narratives are only as durable as the underlying behavior. Wells Fargo's community-banking narrative collapsed when the underlying conduct contradicted it. The communications cannot outrun the operations.
• Trade and regulatory engagement compounds. The Washington investment produced reputational defense in the regulatory category that survived where the consumer-brand work did not.
• The strongest CEO communicator becomes the brand. Jamie Dimon's communications presence is the JPMorgan brand. No competitor produced an equivalent figure in the same window.

The big-banks offensive is the most expensive sustained reputational rebuild in the history of US financial services. The mechanics of why parts of it worked — and why parts of it did not — are the most-studied case in modern corporate communications.

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