Wonga is it a name, slang for money or the route of all evil?

There was a time, not that long ago actually that the word Wonga was nothing more than a slang word used to describe money. It had no more meaning than words such as cash, reddies or spodoolies (not sure if that is how it is spelt). But then a company who offered payday loans was formed and they changed their name to wonga.com. This company grew and quickly changed our perception of the word Wonga, probably forever.

The company managed to trademark the word wonga.com so it is theirs forever. I guess they struggled to trademark Wonga without the .com as that would be like trademarking the word coppers when everyone knows it is a slang term for the police.

Many years ago in the 1980’s there was a brand of slimming biscuits called Aides. This was at a time before any of us had heard of HIV or anyone being HIV positive. The biscuit company disappeared or at least dropped the name Aides as the word aides started to mean something completely different. I think sometimes things can work the other way around as it has with the word Wonga.

Wonga

It is clear that wonga.com is not the only payday loans company out there, but they are pretty well the only one really ever mentioned in the press. It is cleat that the press loves to hate Wonga and I think they really do hate them. I see every day articles about how they offered a loan to a child (of course they didn’t actually offer a loan to a child, what I suspect happened was that somehow the child’s name was on a marketing database and the child got sent a mailing or an sms). But the truth is often irrelevant to the press, as they just want a story. A line I have always enjoyed is “why let the trust get in the way of a good story” and that is sometimes how it is the UK.

So Wonga are the route of all evil according to many commentators. They charge outrageous rates of interest and make load of money. Funny as I always thought that was what happened in a capitalist society. The stockbrokers in the city, the banks, the oil companies, the insurance companies all do the same. They charge a lot and make a lot.

I read that wonga.com is preying on poor people and forcing them into debt. Now I have been out and about in London and other cities and I don’t see too many people dressed up as puppets forcing innocent people into side alleys to get them to sign a loan agreement. Maybe when the press say that they are forcing people into debt, they mean that these people say an advert, responded, lied about their finances, got the money and couldn’t pay it back or refused to pay it back. So does that make Wonga bad? No of course it doesn’t. They are just easy targets because they are hugely successful.

What has always surprised me about Wonga is how quickly they became market leaders. There were and are other companies who have been around longer with massive financial backers and highly skilled marketing teams who have nowhere near the profile of Wonga. Look at Payday UK (Month End Money), they have been around for a lot longer and you rarely, if ever hear them mentioned in the press. They are sizable organisations, turning over hundreds of millions of pounds yet they keep their heads down and do not draw attention to themselves.

So is it that Wonga actually deliberately tries to attract the presses attention? It had been said many times that there is no such thing as bad press and if this is true then the attention that wonga.com gets must be worth millions of pounds of marketing budget. Maybe it is as simple as that, they are generating the negative press attention deliberately as it must make quite a lot of people thin to themselves maybe I should try them?

But whatever the truth about the negative press, there is no way to get away from the truth that they are incredibly popular with their customer base and many people search for them on the internet each day. It is a fact that more people search for the term Wonga than they search for the term payday loan. That is an incredible position to be in. It is the equivalent of more people searching for ant rather than insect. OK not a very good example I agree, how about more people searching for “package holiday, to Alcadia, staying on the ground floor of a 4 star hotel, with room facing the sea and free evening drinks” than “holiday abroad”. The marketing of Wonga has and is fantastic.

There maybe has never been a brand and or company that is so hated by politicians, newspapers, charities, the church and armchair experts yet loved so much by its actual customers. I am certain that most, if not all, of the people who hate wonga.com with a passion have never tried its service or needed money in a hurry. Whilst I appreciate that they believe that they are protecting people who are in financial difficulty, the trust is that none of them seem to know what it is like to be in need of money and have nowhere to go because the banks won’t lend to you, the tax man has taken all your money through VAT, fuel duty, PAYE and every other tax there is, so you borrow from payday loans companies. One must remember that a lot of the people who are looking to payday loan companies have very checkered credit files. A number of them have taken loans and defaulted, or have CCJ’s for non-payment of goods and so the payday loan companies are taking quite a risk in lending to them.

However bad people believe that short-term lenders are, they should remember that they don’t go around to peoples houses and break their legs. The illegal lenders do.

About the author:

Kieran Moulden is the founder and Managing Director of True Blue Loans (www.trueblueloans.co.uk), a company offering instalment loans over 3, 6 or 9 months, with fixed repayments and no fees, just daily interest. He is passionate about ensure that consumers get a fair and honest deal when dealing with short term consumer finance companies.