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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Life's A PitchFriday 30th October 2009 Being unique in the marketplace is THE imperative financial marketing strategy for today. Uniqueness is effectively the make-or-break virtue in this era of hypercompetition. You're in a lift. The CEO of your hottest prospect is also in the lift and recognises you. He says, "I'm curious, tell me what you do again? You're at a networking event. You just happen to run into a prospect in an industry you know well. "Great to meet you. I've seen you at these events before but haven't got round to speaking to you. Tell me some more about yourself!" Why is it that so many senior financial executives struggle when they are are asked to say what they do in typical situations such as those described above? These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds... to seek out new life... and new civilizations... To boldly go where no man has gone before!" Question 1: What does your company do that's different to your competitors? (Remarkable) Question 2: Who does your company do it for? (Reputational) Question 3: What problem do I solve? (Relevant) Question 4: Why do they care? Or, What's in it for them? (Real) "Only [brand] delivers [Q1] to the [target] market, working with companies such as [Q2] to [Q3], which enables them to [Q4]." It's far more than a mission statement, it's understanding your business in a way that gets people excited, involved, and thinking. Apply the template above to your business, adapt it for your needs. You'll be amazed at the positive results. Financial Phobias and How to Avoid ThemThursday 29th October 2009 There’s no doubt that 2010 will present major new challenges for lenders. Our readiness to equip ourselves to deal with these is, to a considerable extent, down to the questions we ask of our organisations. Here are a few of the common, yet frequently undetected ailments that could be holding us back. Commitment Phobia Anti-Social Media Disorder
Metricism Clinical Sameness Syndrome It is imperative that senior financial marketers make differentiation their number one priority in 2010 to ward off the symptoms of the ‘hidden banking crisis’. Borrowing the title from my forthcoming book: It’s time to Create Your Own Space”. Winning Big in the BoardroomWednesday 28th October 2009 There has never been a better time for financial marketers to take the lead in business. Strategic differentiation is the new imperative in markets that are so competitive that they are in danger of becoming even more heavily commoditised. But are financial marketers grasping the nettle? The answer is that some are, but there are still far too few. Research from PA Consulting and the Marketing Forum shows that of the 50% of senior UK marketers who expect to reach the main board, 90% won't make it. On reading the report further, we learn that only 14% focus on improving economic profit, a compelling reason why there is such a low representation of financial marketers in UK banking boardrooms! Maybe that's why Professor Philip Kotler considers that marketers are lucky if they have full control of one P. Laurie Young, marketing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, adds to the debate that headhunters find it hard to recruit for board-level marketing roles because marketers haven't developed enough breadth, particularly in the areas of financial language and commercial understanding.
I believe that there are five key ways that marketers should be addressing these issues to gain the respect that the role deserves to be recognised as a true growth and value driver, not a cost centre.
1. They must be bold visionaries, leading the strategic agenda of the business to create market space. The new stars of the boardroom will be those genuine financial marketing specialists, who challenge accepted norms, are truly visionary and have the commercial acumen to drive business growth and value. Wimps need not apply! Better SamenessMonday 26th October 2009 I loved this quote that I read today and thought I’d share it:
“The challenge is that most banks have a long legacy of product-centric, ‘everything for everybody’ ways of thinking. This leads to decision-making and resource commitments that reinforce ‘better sameness’ rather than true differentiation.”
– Frank Capek Brand Or Be BrandedFriday 23rd October 2009 If you fail to create a position for your business, one will be created for you. Accidental positioning is one of the most critical issues facing the financial organisation today. The imperative must be to ensure your brand doesn't happen by accident. Everyone wants to pigeonhole your business as an independent or clearing bank owned business, a large international player or a small domestic player. Positioning is about taking a stand, about standing out. Its about having your own agenda and being a leader of your segment of the market rather than being moulded by it Join the ConversationThursday 22nd October 2009 B2B financial services businesses are now starting to think about how they can interact with social media channels. However, financial marketers looking to use social media really must become part of social media, not sit outside it. Make a list of online influencers and note the forums in which they are prominent. Join us in checking out what’s going on at LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, trade forums and blogs etc. Listen actively to how and where you and your brand can engage in conversations and start to plan your social media strategy now. As the now famous meerkat would say, "Simples!” More Meerkat MagicWednesday 21st October 2009 Lower cost of market entry Google charges less if people search by brand name, they charge more if they search for something generic. The interesting part of the campaign for me is that it was based partially on the fact that ‘meerkat’ had a cost per click of 5 pence compared to £5 for the keyword ‘market’. Driving traffic to an engaging and entertaining site became a far more cost effective exercise. Think Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) From an SEO point of view, CompareTheMeerkat is faring incredibly well. The two-way links with the main CompareTheMarket site, together with viral linking from blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are a powerful combination in the eyes of Google. Meerkat MusingsTuesday 20th October 2009 Focus on a key word The only thing that distinguished them was the word ‘market'. Focusing on a key word would create their own space between them and their competition. Create a brand personality The leap forward came in not only creating a character but also being clear what type of character they didn't want. They were seeking something that would engage on an emotional level, with all due respect to Michael Winner! What We Can All Learn from Meerkat MarketingMonday 19th October 2009 An aristocratic furry creature in a velvet smoking jacket stands on a stool in front of the fire in a baronial hall and introduces himself as Aleksandr, founder of comparethemeerkat.com. He is frustrated that people keep coming to his website looking for cheaper car insurance, instead of going to comparethemarket.com! Let’s have a look at a few results. The campaign achieved all of its twelve month objectives in just 9 weeks. The brand is now number 1 in spontaneous awareness and consideration. Quote volumes have increased by over 83%. Its cost per visit has been reduced by 73%. Today, Aleksandr has more than 480,000 fans on Facebook and almost 19,000 followers on Twitter. The comparethemeerkat.com website does actually allow visitors to compare meerkats and has had more than 5.6 million hits since its inception. Comparethemarket.com is now one of the most visited insurance websites in the UK. We’re talking about a market that by its very nature is a commodity – an online financial and utility services aggregator. Comparethemarket.com also had less of an advantage than most. Take the name to start with - it is unwieldy and unmemorable. Its identity was similar to its nearest (bigger spending) competitor, GoCompare. Every competitor was boasting the same key features and benefits This week I explore what the commercial finance industry can learn from Meerkat Marketing... Being ThereFriday 16th October 2009 The Peter Sellers all-time comedy classic, "Being There", is right up there with my all-time favourite films. Right now, there is a lot to be said for applying its title to your marketing approach.
Sure, the words "community", "creativity", "concept" and "campaign" sound so much more dynamic and exciting than "consistency" but without the latter they will not flourish.
Here are five areas where a consistent, regular action-centred approach will help get you through the credit crunch challenge.
1. Base your communications on a central theme - your clear core brand essence. This is a distinctive attribute that you alone can own. Apply the truth of your supporting messages consistently and creatively across your chosen media.
2. Be true to your marketing strategy and see it through - Do not pull marketing spend as a knee-jerk reaction. If you withdraw your marketing, what is it saying to the rest of the market and how is anyone going to notice your brand out there? Now is the time to increase your spend and take more market share, particularly if your industry is going through a period of dramatic consolidation. The real risk is standing still - in reality it will mean you are going backwards. If your competition begins holding back on their marketing spend – this is your opportunity to take their enquiries.
3. Communicate more regularly - issue regular email updates on products, services and successes and drive traffic to generate enquiry. Be smart with segmentation by market, job title and interest. Make sure that you gain the commitment of everyone in the organisation to continue to feed you these gold nuggets of information.
4. Keep it going - Being consistent does not mean being complacent or being static – keep your marketing fresh and creative and rotate your adverts to entice your prospects.
5. Maintain adherence to clear brand guidelines - Be consistent in terms of the look and feel of your brand. Inconsistency leads to the dilution of awareness and message retention. If you don't think you can commit to this look deeper, maybe it's time to refresh your corporate identity or image before you drive forward with your planned regular communications. If you're proud of your brand you will want to see it out there all the time.
I will leave you with a Chance The Gardener quote from the film: "As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden."
Refinancing - Whether or WhichThursday 15th October 2009 I read a Seth Godin's blog which spoke to me about the current 'refinancing' or 'replacement' market.
He says: "When competing against a market dominator, your marketing generates more bang for the buck when you try to steal people who have already been persuaded to enter the category by the other guy. ...It doesn't pay for an insurgent energy drink to sell "thirst" because much of that marketing will just get people to go buy the brands they've always bought. The opportunity instead is to provide leverage at the last possible moment in the buying cycle." Undoubtedly, the biggest opportunities for the independent commercial finance organisations today, lie with testing and running professionally executed data-driven switch campaigns and on the flip-side, focusing on retention and referral! The Quest for Internal LifeWednesday 14th October 2009 Living the brand has everything to do with authenticity, clarity and differentiation. The core essence of your brand must be rooted in, reflect and strengthen the culture of your organisation before it can ever become a reality to your customers. To engage with your clients, you first need to engage with your internal stakeholders – your employees. Here are six steps you can take now in your brand’s quest for internal life:
Standard Bank - Yes, Isn't It?Tuesday 13th October 2009 Brand strategies need to focus more on customer benefits. When we re-branded Credit-IQ as “Vision Critical”, we did so because the fundamental benefit is that the company gives its asset based lending clients complete visibility of mission-critical customer financial data. With Litmus Advisory, we wanted to emphasise the scientific nature of the due diligence process that leads directly to the fulfilment of their core essence, “Delivering Certainty”.
The brand names are both evocative and grounded in the very things that are special about the approach and ethos of the business. They map to the core essence of their respective businesses.
OK then - who branded Standard Bank? Hands up! No takers? That aside, who changed their anodine but customer-focused “Simpler, Better, Faster.” brand pillars to the internally-facing, “Inspired, Motivated, Involved”? Let’s listen to what they had to say: “Our new pay-off line - Inspired. Motivated. Involved. - encapsulates the essence of what we are and what we would like to be for our customers, our people and our stakeholders. We are striving to make a real difference.” Well, you have to applaud the sentiment but the delivery, from brand name to brand pillars, is anything but concerned with making a real difference. They continue: “We have carried out extensive research to develop a greater understanding of attitudes, beliefs and expectations of Standard Bank and the way in which these could best be met. Based on this research, it became apparent that a revised brand promise and pay-off line needed to be developed to align with the group vision and values. The intrinsic value of the brand has also been maximised by aligning a core set of brand characteristics and principles to assist in providing a consistent brand experience.” Again, I can’t fault the brand logic. The plain truth of the matter is that, sadly Standard Bank has missed the point. It may seem on the face of it to be a perfectly acceptable text-book rationale of what every bank needs to do, but where is the central customer-focused brand driving action that it relates to – what and where is the core essence? They have skipped the hard part of branding and the result is a "Me, Me, Me" exercise in committee-based self-adulation which has ended up being "me-too meaningless". I would have preferred to have seen either an announcement of a brave, bold new evocative brand name to replace the lacklustre Standard Bank tag or alternatively the strapline of “Standard Bank – Anything But” – with brand pillars aligned around the genuine ways in which its delivery to customers is distinctive from other banks. Coco Chanel summed it up perfectly – Ask yourself the question from your customer’s point of view: “Why should I care about you?” Maybe my comments seem harsh - it's probably because I care. On ParadigmsMonday 12th October 2009 Agencies also chatter enthusiastically about market paradigms more and more. The dictionary tells us its a mindset. A formed opinion. A way of seeing the world. A particular way of thinking. A fixed pattern or model. Paradigms are, in effect, the antithesis of creativity. They discourage and eventually destroy ideas. On closer analysis, a paradigm is a set of rules that does two things: (1) it establishes or defines boundaries, and (2) in an agency context it informs the ‘creative team’ to behave purely within the constraints of accepted boundaries. It’s painting by numbers. The province of the ‘me-too’ is a far cry from the approach of Strand Financial.
Pick An Attribute, Any One!Friday 09th October 2009 I'm often asked by financial marketers how to go about selecting which attributes are right for the business and how these should be prioritised. In theory, this is straightforward - choose attributes that map to the core essence of the brand - the closer these are to the brand essence the higher these are ranked.
Whilst I stand by this approach, to prevent your branding programme becoming a purely touchy-feely exercise as far as the board is concerned, it is helpful to think about your brand attributes in terms of proportionate share of wallet. Brainstorming is just part of the equation. The fundamental objective of determining brand attributes is to identify which are most closely linked to customer attraction/ acquisition and loyalty / referral and to try to quantify the advantage.
By examining which brand attributes are working most successfully, we recommend conducting a survey with your highest spending and most loyal customers. In this way, you will gain compelling evidence of the relative importance of these attributes to your business.
First, segment your customer base in order of contribution to profits. Next, use the survey to establish share of wallet by asking those customers what proportion of total business they place with you. Finally, ask your clients to rate on a scale how much they agree or disagree with various statements about your company or website, where each statement focuses on a single brand attribute.
This is also a great opportunity to test off-brand attributes as negative statements. For example, a strong negative score on 'complexity' could mean that 'simplicity' is a powerful brand attribute. These assumptions require careful scrutiny. That's why as well as scoring the attribute itself, we recommend asking a second-tier question to determine whether or not the specific attribute is actually of importance to the client.
The Strategy BalloonThursday 08th October 2009 I always enjoy reading posts from Stuart Cross of Morgan Cross. His latest take on the "Strategy Balloon" is well worth reading by all financial marketers looking to deliver a grounded strategy. In this example, the strategy balloon is connected to the ground by six critical ropes: "Genuine alignment – all the top team need to be genuinely committed to delivering the agreed strategy Relentless communication – the strategic intent should form the basis of all communication with the organisation Resource allocation – resources should be allocated on their ability to deliver the strategy Talent deployment – your best and most appropriate people should be leading your key strategic objectives Accountabilities – their individual performance, and the collective performance of the top team, should be directly based on implementing the strategy Corporate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should reflect the strategy, as should the associated rewards and bonuses." The argument goes that if these ropes start to snap, then the balloon will drift and the people on the ground will not be able to see it or change its course. In other words, the strategy will have disappeared and all we'll be left with is just a load of hot air. Check out the blog at http://www.crosswiresblog.com/. The Big Difference Agency EcologyWednesday 07th October 2009 To make a big difference, there's no need to be a big agency. Here are some of the things that we believe in that are 'Big'. Big Difference - The ability to show every client what it means to 'Create Your Own Space'.
Chaordic TheoryTuesday 06th October 2009 Dee Hock, the founder of Visa International, developed a vision of what he calls a "chaordic" organisation - a loosely organised confederation designed to enhance both focus and flexibility – combining the management of chaos and order. A nucleus of intelligent people, complemented by the creation of small teams that would offer the right blend of talent for any given project. This is the ideal model for the new style agency ecology, such as that of Strand Financial - which has no wish to be limited by the talents and scope of a conventional hierarchy of account management tiers. Dee Hock says, "In Visa, we tried to create an invisible organisation and keep it that way. It's the results, not the structure or management that should be apparent." No-one who has witnessed the explosive growth of Visa can doubt he’s right. Snail MailMonday 05th October 2009 I never cease to wonder at the sheer volume of snail mail I receive from banks, nor how similar these pieces are. I decided to collect them and read through in detail. Rather than cluster by brand attributes, the communications focused around the well-travelled but unremarkable trail of product and service features. In order, offers focused on the following: 1) better rates
2) higher returns 3) personal service 4) fast turnround 5) product specific benefits - including insurance, identity protection, travel benefits
6) affinity programmes - sport, holidays etc The majority of these feature happy families, happy employees and serious bankers - oh and the colour blue! In other words, corporate wallpaper. Come on banks, it really is time to accelerate your marketing and Create Your Own Space!
Consistency In ConsolidationFriday 02nd October 2009 "Powerful brands communicate their values through every point of contact they have with consumers." (Cleaver,1999). However, "the involvement of staff in brand delivery engenders problems of a lack of consistency in service delivery standard." (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996).
During periods of market consolidation as we have now, it is inevitable that there will be a shake-out of people, including some highly skilled and experienced senior players. The ability to handle these changes successfully is vested, to no small extent, in the consistency of brand delivery, sales process and customer experience. Consistent rituals and familiar encounters that reassure customers are critical at this time. Without them, financial organisations are more exposed to key salespeople leaving with their clients and muddied messages clouding what should be a clear brand promise. The first step is to visualise the kind of customer experience that would be true to the core essence and UVPs (Unique Value Propositions) of the business. For example, if your target clients value the core brand promise of "Inspiring Confidence, describe the conversations that would lead your customers to experience this. Then, define the sales processes and activities necessary to create and support the ideal customer-preferred, brand-aligned customer experience every time.
How Now, Purple Cow!Thursday 01st October 2009 Now and again, it is healthy to check back at what the marketing gurus said in times past, to apply them where they they are still relevant and where they will be welcomed by today's markets and sometimes to challenge them. The statement, "Functional values in services branding do not just relate to what was delivered, but to HOW it is delivered." (Grönroos, 1990) highlights one of the fundamental differences between product and services branding. Develop your value proposition around the 'HOW' in financial services marketing and you are well on the way to Creating Your Own Space. |
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