If anything, this study further illustrates the power of social media (when done well). Promoting brand advocacy – getting other people to spread the word about you – is a huge part of it. And a referral from a friend via a Facebook comment carries no more weight than a statement made in person. They are one and the same.

Additionally, I agree with some of the earlier statements that the phrase “Online Community” could have negatively impacted the results. I am active in several online social circles, and I’ve not heard any of them referred to as such by other users.

I agree with you though: How was “online community” defined? If they used the term “online community” in the survey, then I could understand why social media would score lower than expected.

Also, I wonder if Gen-Y makes any distinction between recommendations, advice and referrals they get from friends and family online vs. other channels.

Another thing: Is this the complete list of “influences”? For seniors, the percentages don’t add to 100, so it implies there are other sources. Like how about bank branch reps?

Actually, since I haven’t seen the source doc, just this article, maybe I should be asking Financial Brand: Were there were more sources shown, but only four included in the graphic in this article?

So what does this say about WOM (word-of-mouth) marketing and net promoter score? It supports some things that I’ve been arguing for years: That focusing on “intention to refer” is a misguided metric. And that the change (improvement) in a firm’s NPS might reflect nothing more than an underlying shift in the demographics of its customer (or worse, survey sample) base.

Here’s another thing that I think marketers (specifically, the net promoter syndrome sufferers) just don’t understand: People change. Got news for them: When I (and others of my generation, i.e. boomers) was in my 20s, I relied a lot more on friends/family for advice on products. Became less reliant over time. Will this happen with today’s Gen Yers? Maybe not, thanks to the tools that exist that make it easier to connect w/ friends and family, but the Fiserv study goes to show how the focus on WOM is overblown.

I imagine that influencing financial decisions could be a motivator for some financial services companies to engage in social media — and in this case, it’s useful to know that maybe such a goal is a waste of time. But it could be useful for other goals.

Considering that “friends and family” often make up someone’s “online community” (ie, mostly friends and family would be Gen Y’s friends on FB and followers on Twitter), it might be interesting to drill down on what the survey, or the survey participants, meant by “online community.”

Since this survey is about “who do you trust” in a way, I throw this out for consideration: Isn’t it possible that via social media at least some customers start to view a “bank” or a “credit union” not as just that, but as the person they connected with on Twitter who helped fix that big problem they griped about in a tweet directed at nobody in particular? In that customer’s mind, couldn’t they potentially start to think of that bank or credit union with more positive feelings, as being more trustworthy than they previously might have believed, a kind of “friend” who was looking out for them when they had an issue? Maybe that bank or credit union then transitions to a higher level in the realm of influences; it becomes not just a faceless corporate entity that is part of an “online community,” but a little bit closer to being part of the “friends” circle. I’m just thinking out loud.

It might sound like I’m defending social media, but in reality I also question its true ROI value. Or at least I question it’s value based on what financial services companies have done with it so far. I do trust that some companies will get more creative and impressive as time goes on.

On another point: I agree with you that it’s important to note the age ranges used to define the demographic groups. In this case, I think they are a little odd. I suppose they wanted to limit Gen Y to the adult portion of that group. But it might have been more useful to go with “20somethings” as a label than Gen Y. (I’ve read one definition of Gen Y as being those born from late 70s to late 90s.)