On a Mission
A day with Mike Harris
Stand for Something
Building trusted brands
The Upside of the Downturn
Ten Management Strategies
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How to talk to your FDThursday 26th March 2009 Tim Ward, finance director of the FTSE Group and former head of marketing at the London Stock Exchange has some clear tips for financial marketers on winning friends and influencing people, not least amongst our finance director colleagues. Many marketers are getting ready for a new financial year. Here are 4Ps that will lead to a closer alignment with the FD / CFO.
Positive
"A good relationship with the finance director will ensure that everyone is clear on marketing's contribution and how it fits into the business model."
Proactive
"Budget time can be one big confrontation. But if the conversation has been constructive well in advance and the evidence is properly laid out, it should be obvious to both sides what's needed."
Process
"We're not looking for a complete financial analysis, just something that can be measured over time."
Profit-oriented
"Marketing is like any other project when it comes to fighting for budget. It should be clear how any given activity generates benefits for the business. This means concrete revenue, not things that might lead to it, such as brand building."
Getting EmotionalWednesday 25th March 2009 Trust is a word used a great deal in financial services. Like reputation, trust is something that is hard earned and easily lost. Building trust is an essential part of feeling an emotional connection with a brand and this comes from positive shared experiences with the brand over time. The 4Rs show how heartshare can be won: Remarkable - The brand is unique, making an intense impact on the client Reputational - The brand is in some way admirable and the association builds customer esteem Relevant - The brand stands for something important and pertinent in the eyes of the customer - providing a solution to a problem or creating an opportunity Real - The brand connects with the customer on multiple levels across several senses Mindshare is accomplished through defining a shared core brand essence and relevant Unique Value Propositions. Heartshare can only be achieved when the values and beliefs that support that brand promise permeate the company at every level from hiring criteria, training to organisational culture.
Ultimately, values cannot be imposed; they have to be inherent within the business. Purpose cannot be manufactured; it must be felt like a cause. And if that sounds hard, so it should. Because it is.
Dialogue Email - A Two Way StreetTuesday 24th March 2009 Even HTML marketing emails from legitimate companies are feeling more and more like spam. I now only read emails from companies I already do business with. It's not that these emails are not creative or have poor content, the reality is that I do not have time to read each and every one. I am not alone. Those who thrive in this economic climate need to stop pushing messages at customers and work at building their core essence to create unique value propositions; engaging with them through multiple channels, integrating their brand into customer's daily operations and gaining peer to peer referral. Here are some suggestions to get your emails read: A) Conduct an online survey on your web site to identify what specific individuals are interested in and to stimulate business conversations. Make the email simple check box answers. It's about creating two way dialogue, not standing on a soap-box. Publish the results. Challenging the ChimeraFriday 20th March 2009 I don't know if anyone saw Heston Blumenthal on 4 this week with the product of his Tudor Feast. He created an edible mythical monster cunningly constructed by his chefs from bits of different animals. He contrived to make the 'daddy of all meat monsters' using the head of a pig, the body of a lamb and the wings and back end of a goose.
Tom "The Remarkable Chimera" Asacker once said that "The chimera is indeed a remarkable beast, with the head of a lion, body of a goat, and a serpent's tail. It¹s also a myth that has faded away."
This challenges Seth Godin's view and my own that "Remarkable is necessary to market today, because unremarkable products don¹t get talked about, they just fade away." Whilst there are many elements of the article with which I disagree, since I hold firmly to the assertion that the entire purpose of marketing is differentiation, the pay off line sums up the 'Real' element of the 4Rs: "Remember, it doesn¹t matter what people think about you or your brand. What matters is how you make them feel about themselves and their decisions in your presence. And that¹s what's really important when marketing a brand today." To my mind, both Seth Godin and Tom Asacker are right and wrong! The reality in financial brands are more finely balanced. It helps initially to take some risks and get noticed, thereafter you need to deliver the right mix of ingredients to make an end product or service that people will actually want. If your brand engages intellectually as well as emotionally across the spectrum of "Remarkable, Relevant, Reputational and Real", you are more likely to win BOTH mindspace and heartspace, and sustain the position where you will Create Your Own Space. Become a Collaboration StationWednesday 18th March 2009 A great deal is spoken today in financial marketing circles about creating communities. A customer's sense of community linked directly to your financial brand, re-enforces top of mind status and leads to a deeper level of engagement beyond the usual financier / client relationship. For a community to be adopted by customers, a need to connect with other customers in the context of the brand¹s consumption is vital. Such interaction with fellow brand users include: Sharing - User group forums, wikis, seminars and events where knowledge, data and technical information can be stored and shared easily are very powerful ways of developing dialogue within communities. Validation - Members of brand communities often display a strong desire to be validated or accepted by fellow members, gaining esteem through association. Typically, this is focused on a strongly differentiated attribute and a sense of what is 'cool', whether this is engendered by technology or style. Personality - Members of the Apple computer brand community feel a strong sense of expressing their personality by espousing all things Apple and by so doing (vocally and passionately) rejecting the market leader Microsoft. Esotericism - This refers to the doctrines or practices of esoteric knowledge, that which is specialised or advanced in nature, available only to a narrow circle of "enlightened", "initiated", or highly educated people. Relevance is vital to the success of the on-line community. The user-friendly banks such as The Co-operative Bank and First Direct have a natural advantage in the trust required to build such communities, as do a number of independent players. Social media was made for them just as they were made for social media. It is time to Create Your Own Space by forming your own community.
Time for ToneTuesday 17th March 2009 The way we say things is just as important as what we say. This excellent example of a concise style guide from Fidelity demonstrates a real commitment to employing the correct tone of voice.
"Fidelity aims to achieve a tone of voice that conveys and reinforces our core brand values. Our voice should be a human one - real, friendly and informative, presenting the company as committed, professional and trustworthy. Our copy objectives Customer-focused: know who you are talking to and adapt the tone and content accordingly. Clear: however long you've been working in the investment arena, keep trying to put yourselves into your clients' shoes. Will they understand easily, or is the copy heavy with financial services jargon? If you must use jargon, explain it in plain terms immediately. Competent: use an authoritative tone, to help position Fidelity as an expert and the market leader. The tone of voice should show how seriously we take our jobs, recognising that customers have put their trust in us and demonstrating how we live up to that trust. However, confidence should not be pushed into arrogance. Concise: get your point across as soon as you can, or you might lose your readers halfway through your text. Humour: this is useful in the financial arena and has been used to great effect by Fidelity. But it has to be the right kind of humour. We don't want: flip, frivolous, puns and gags. We do want: apposite wit, bon mots. It's not about raising a laugh just to get a laugh - it's about raising a laugh, or even just a wry smile, to make a point. Personal/accessible: avoid formal, old-fashioned language. As a test, read your copy out loud and see how it sounds. But take care not to go the other way - too chatty or clever and you could sound patronising and as if you're talking down to our clients. The use of humour or irony can help us to communicate on the readers' wavelength. Accurate: check your work carefully. Typographical and grammatical errors detract from the overall quality of our material." Press On!Monday 16th March 2009 Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the USA said: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Never were those words more true than now. The deeper the downturn, the more marketers must press on. It's not time to batten down the hatches, it's time to act and act decisively to market harder and smarter than ever before. The Internet and the banking crisis have enabled us to create a space for smaller independent finance providers to take on the corporate behemoths. They are not only "getting by" but are actually growing apace. We are not only sticking with it, we are powering ahead with proven marketing that boosts the bottom line. The commitment we make to our clients is that if they invest in implementing an annual marketing strategy now, they will emerge stronger. We'll press on! Get Your Coat, You've PulledFriday 13th March 2009 Interruption marketing no longer works. People are more adept than ever at being able to filter you out. They ignore banner ads, they skim through commercials on Sky Plus and TIVO, they click to another site in seconds if they don't see what they're looking for. Pull marketing, on the other hand, is about engaging your prospects and clients in a way that attracts them towards you.
The dynamic has changed from interruption to attraction. Companies can no longer market at people, they must connect with them. The focus has switched from reactive marketing to interactive marketing. There's a new kind of ROI, not just Return on Investment but Return on Involvement. As we move from a strictly rational level of engagement to embrace that all important emotional dimension, it's high time financial marketers went out on the pull.
Save the Last Dance for MeThursday 12th March 2009 To conclude my metaphorical series analysing 4Rs dynamics, I have sought out the bright lights of the nightclub for inspiration. Here, I put 'Remarkable' with 'Real' in the mix. High Real, High Remarkable High Real, Low Remarkable Low Real, Low Remarkable Low Real, High Remarkable Tailor Made MarketingWednesday 11th March 2009 I bought four suits in Carnaby Street this year on one visit, yet I didn't intend to buy so many when I set out. What made my shopping trip so successful was the 4Rs working perfectly in combination: - Remarkable (style) It gets interesting when you start to compare style and fit, by plotting 'Remarkable' with 'Relevant': High Relevant, High Remarkable High Relevant, Low Remarkable Low Relevant, Low Remarkable Low Relevant, High Remarkable The Big MatchTuesday 10th March 2009 The metaphor I have developed below highlights the dynamics of matching a variable attribute (Reputational), in a Boston Box style quadrant, against a constant attribute (Remarkable). High Reputational, High Remarkable High Reputational, Low Remarkable Low Reputational, Low Remarkable Low Reputational, High Remarkable The 4 RsMonday 09th March 2009 I have just received an email with specific reference to the 4Rs. "Mike, I have been following your blogs for a while. I see that you refer to the 4Rs quite a bit but can find no reference to this in any previously published white papers."
Firstly, thank you for getting in touch. I coined the phrase a while back when I was looking for a memorable way to explain the relationship between key attributes for the SPACE model that I have developed for Strand Financial. My starting point was two large scale commercial projects, which used data from hundreds of brands over many years to derive insight into how brands develop in mindspace and heartspace.
Young and Rubicam's Brand Asset Valuator model involved 350,000 consumer interviews measured 55 different consumer perceptions with regard to over 20,000 brands. It focuses on how mindspace is created. The Brand Dynamics Model, using Millward Brown data, covers 3500 brands across major world markets. I have combined these findings into a radar chart model showing how a brand can be built in mindspace. The 4 Rs represent the four attributes a brand in the minds of the customer. Remarkable (The starting point for all brands is awareness) Reputational (Esteem reduces risk of purchase) Relevant (Elements that matter most to people) Real (Emotional connection driven through experience of the brand, leading to familiarity, confidence and trust For a brand to fulfil its promise, the 4Rs must be adopted at every level from corporate strategy through to engagement with the customer. The Unreasonable ManFriday 06th March 2009 I thought that I would start the week with a rallying cry.
I read a quote this week by George Bernard Shaw which said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man."
It follows that the only progressive business strategy is to 'Create Your Own Space'. It's time to start being unreasonable!
Workshops Jargon BusterThursday 05th March 2009 I was asked by a client recently about our Create Your Own Space Brand Workshops and it made me think that it would be helpful to get down some definitions. Here is a jargon buster style glossary of phrases that we use within our workshops at Strand Financial: Core Essence - The brand's promise distilled in the simplest, most single-minded terms - the phrase you most want to own in a client's mind. Brand Pillars - The guiding insights that support the essence of the brand. Brand Mission - A shared,‘realisable’ vision as to how the brand will act on its insight, articulated in the form of a practical 'elevator pitch'. Brand Personality - The brand's recognisable personality traits. Brand Tone of Voice - How the brand communicates and tells its story to its target audience. Brand Experience - The means by which a brand is created in the mind of a stakeholder by consistent interactions at key 'touchpoints'. Brand Thesaurus - the vocabulary used by the brand to give a unified 'language' to the team. Web Site Audits - Top 10 FindingsWednesday 04th March 2009 I have been looking through recent web site audits requested by financial firms. Here is my top ten list of the key issues that crop up time and time again. 1. Stand Out 2. Watch Your Fold 4. Over-Use of Flash 5. Call to Action 6. Underline Links 7. Refresh 9. Contextual Links 10. Add a Site Map The golden rules are: First be found, then be found interesting. Completed the Audit? How did you get on?Tuesday 03rd March 2009 See how your brand scores in the Create Your Own Space™ Brand Audit: B 150 – 195 C 100 - 145 D 50 - 95 E 0 - 45 Survival of The FittestTuesday 03rd March 2009 Bail-outs aside, in commercial terms, an ecological system is analogous to a “free market” of perfect competition. Just as living organisms compete, often with limited resources to survive, so do financial institutions.
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase, “Survival of the Fittest”, in Principles of Biology (1864) to describe Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection of living species. It is interesting to note that the concept of Natural Selection is not about the “survival of the fastest”, “survival of the strongest”, or even “survival of the biggest”. Of course, “survival of the fittest” in this context doesn’t relate to the most highly trained and physically energetic. It means those organisms which are the most suited to their environment and, ultimately, to survival itself. The three essential components of evolution via natural selection include: Genetic Diversity: Even members of the same species have characteristics that vary from one individual to the next. Financial brands must hone individual attributes and a core essence that effectively differentiates them from everyone else in their business environment. Relative Fitness: In any given environment, some individuals have characteristics that put them at an advantage over individuals who do not possess those characteristics. Look for Unique Value Propositions, new attributes and message gaps that your competitors do not own and yet are of high relevance and importance to the customer and to the changing conditions of the environment. Population Shift: In any given environment, those individuals who have advantageous characteristics will generally be healthier and thrive. Organisms that are not suitably adapted to their environment will either have to move out of the habitat or die out. The current spate of mergers and acquisitions could create a void in the landscape – either by losing competitors or because the new organisation is so preoccupied with the integration process that it loses ground. This may allow companies to create their own space and colonise areas left behind. Conversely, strong new organisations can emerge, with more powerful attributes than before and dominate a market. Just as the survival of organisms may be linked to a particular ecological niche, i.e. they are a good fit for their environment, so financial organisations focused on geographical sectors or industry segments can thrive if the conditions are right.
Which brings me to my point. An individual brand with distinctive attributes, perfectly suited the needs of its environment can create market shift. It can only sustain or improve its competitive superiority where it adapts to the demands of its changing environment continually. Engagement AuditMonday 02nd March 2009 To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statements below?
Strongly Agree (10 Points)
Agree (5 Points) Disagree (0 Points) 1. Our clients recognise that our brand promise is unique and understand how it is distinct from our competitors' propositions.
2. Our clients participate and interact with our brand. 3. Our customers feel an affinity and an emotional connection with our brand. 4. Our clients are happy to give written testimonials about us. 5. Our customers are strong influencers and actively recommend our brand, products and services to others by word of mouth. |
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