Wesabe is one of the few finance-related companies which seems to truly understand the role of social media marketing to building a brand. Which is why I asked Wesabe VP of marketing Gabriel Griego to speak at last month’s Innovative Marketing of Financial Services forum.
Gabe was kind enough to Skype in for questions after the presentation. No mean feat, given he was on holidays in Nicaragua at the time.
It turns out Gabe simply believes in using new media techniques to conduct traditional marketing, as you’ll see from this 15 minute video.
Wesabe makes a genuine effort to engage with bloggers, uses Twitter to announce and get feedback on upgrades to its service and, as James Gardner put it so aptly, engages in “community management” rather than PR.
If it sounds like I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, it’s because I find this quite rare. As an Australian-based journalist covering banking innovation I spend most of my time seeking innovation, searching for examples that stand out, and then trying to convince those involved to speak about it.
Perhaps it’s because bankers generally fear failure that they are hesitant to promote new things before they’re cemented in the day-to-day. Or maybe they define innovation differently to me.
At last month’s innovative marketing forum we had an interesting panel discussion about innovation. Commonwealth Bank GM of digital marketing Trent Moy made the point that people looking at innovation often get caught up in the “shiny new things” as opposed to structural or systems innovation that can actually deliver better results to the bottom line.
This is true, but equally damaging is a hesitance to even consider a new thing before three of your competitors are using it and customers are asking why you’re not there yet.
Let’s debate innovation in Australian bank marketing
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
What’s more important in the current climate: Sticking to traditional messages that promote trust in your brand, or embracing innovative Web 2.0 marketing efforts? Can financial services marketers do both?
This is just one of the issues participants will be debating at this year’s Online Banking ReviewMarketing forum coming up in Sydney on August 28.
Ahead of the forum we’d like to open up the discussion to our audience. We’d love to hear your opinion on the current state of affairs in financial services marketing.
Is the current culture of online participation causing damage to bank brands?
Are we getting closer to the death of the campaign where activity is ongoing and integrated campaigns are less important?
We’ll be discussing these issues in more depth when we break for an interactive roundtable session being led by Hitwise analyst Sandra Hanchard at the forum.
Register for the forum before July 31 and you can take-advantage of our early-bird offer to bring a colleague for free. This offer will end on July 31, so let your colleagues/clients know about it today.
Speakers are already confirmed from Forrester Research, HSBC, Google, Ideal Interfaces, Commonwealth Bank, RaboPlus, and Citibank, with more to come.
“Why is any bank these days spending millions of dollars on creating TV ads?” columnist Simon van Wyk controversially asks in tomorrow’s edition of Online Banking Review.
This is something the panelists on last night’s episode of The Gruen Transfer touched on when they analysed the latest set of bank advertisements. You can download the transcript here.
DDB creative director Matt Eastwood agreed advertising a bank is a challenge and that “The problem with a lot of them is that they try to make you love them and it’s never going to happen”.
Van Wyk argues banks should be taking a leaf from the books of the new crop of agile, web-based financial services companies like Wesabe, Mint, Prosper and Zopa – all of which make it easy for people to deal with them, and provide a valuable experience.
He says it’s time bank marketers concentrated on creating value by launching innovative products and services that can be spread via networks, rather than just delivering advertising messages.
CBA marketing director Mark Buckman certainly thinks it did, telling The Australian the campaign had contributed to the bank’s recent 0.34 per cent increase in market share in deposits.”We’ve had month after month of positive market share (growth) in all our key product lines that we haven’t had in years.”
What do you think?
Could the bank have achieved the same growth by launching an innovative new deposit product and releasing it on Facebook?
Should banks be redirecting the millions of dollars they spend on TV advertising to services that provide real value to customers?
Some of the titles of the many videos put together by consumers on the site include:
“We don’t care about anyone”, “Bad bank” and “Bullsh*t is our business.”
The site is getting some strong traffic with viewings of the spoof ads also high for user-generated content.
One contribution titled “A bank that tells it like it is” reflects the overall theme of the videos with lines including “At Gruen bank our queues are short because most of our customers have given up trying.”
“Take out one of our low interest high risk loans today. You’ll be paying it off until you die. And then it will be your children’s problem.”
“Gruen Bank – Bleeding you dry for 25 years.”
The site is an interesting research vehicle for bank marketers.
Instead of believing that consumers care about the latest product feature or promotional offer perhaps financial services marketers should be working out better ways to connect with customers, to generate a laugh, or alter perceptions that the bank only cares about the bank/shareholders and not its customers.
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