Politicians rarely comment one way or the other on advertising but in a radio interview this week Fine Gael's Michael Noonan said that unlike their European counterparts, financial institutions in this country do not advertise on the basis of price but rather on the quality and range of their services.

He was making the point about the Bank of Scotland's arrival into the market with its cut-rate mortgage package.

The clearest example of a service-driven campaign is Bank of Ireland's 100 Y2K campaign which started last year and will run until mid-2000..

The bank has already spent £1 million (€1.3 million) on the campaign devised by McCann Erickson and there have been four television commercials for four of the steps.

In all, more than 40 steps have been announced to date and at the end of this month the bank will be half way through the campaign.

"We haven't advertised each single step," says Pat Waldron, head of marketing at Bank of Ireland. "But each step was formulated as a result of extensive research into what our customers want." Research into how the campaign is being received has, says Mr Waldron, been encouraging and he believes the campaign is dealing with issues of transparency expressed by customers. The steps range from a baby-break repayment holiday for mortgage holders to free business courses.

The campaign - which runs across all media - began in September 1998 and at that time there was talk about the improvements being in place by the year 2000.

Mr Waldron says the steps will be in place by the middle of next year and that the bank's research shows customers are happy with that interpretation of "by Y2K".

But running such a long campaign, especially one with a millennium theme, does have its risks given the already growing millennium fatigue. The rather self important, smug tone of the voiceover at the end of the ads would seem unlikely to calm customers' well-documented scepticism about banking in general.