Marketing Monday: Banking by iPhone - Who Cares?

Most of the time when I see a TV commercial I can figure out the advertiser's objectives and strategy, but with CIBC's new commercials touting their iPhone app, I'm at a loss.

While Marketing 101 tells us that we should have a USP (unique selling proposition), CIBC's "the only Canadian bank to offer a mobile banking app for iPhone" may be unique, but I'm not sure that it's compelling.Who really wants to do their banking by mobile phone? Not me!

• It's difficult to find reliable statistics about iPhone penetration in Canada, but I'd be surprised if there are as many as 1 million users. Extrapolating from info provided by Rogers, the country's largest mobile provider, suggests that there may be even fewer.
• If someone doesn't have (or plan to have) an iPhone, would they think more favourably about CIBC because they are alone in offering mobile banking by iPhone?
• Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on prime-time TV advertising for a service that's likely to have such limited appeal?

This is one marketing program that presents me with more questions than answers, but maybe CIBC knows something that I don't.