Dexia Bank, serving France and the Netherlands, has done two of the most innovative things you may ever see in financial services marketing. First, they have targeted a Gen-Y audience with live rock concerts streamed in the bank’s banner ads (more on that in a moment). Second, they’ve set up a whole separate bank, Axion, to exclusively serve customers ages 12-25.

AXION
Dexia’s youth bank, exclusively for Gen-Y.

This idea of a bank-within-a-bank is not entirely unique. For instance, Bank of the Wichitas created Redneck Bank, an online/direct spinoff targeting Midwest mullet lovers. But Redneck is merely a reskinned bank with a lifestyle veneer. What Axion is doing is quite different: unique products, promotions and educational resources exclusively targeted to a narrow audience segment and marketed under a separate standalone bank brand.

By 2020, the retail financial landscape could be littered with hundreds — if not thousands — of these micro-niche banks. A big bank that may be struggling to serve everyone today could be completely transformed into a collection of sucecssful sub-brands 10-20 years from now. Instead of one corporate website, think “many different websites,” all with different styles and different products.

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The ‘Banner Concerts’ Concept

To promote Axion back in 2009, Dexia created one of the most innovative promotions of the year — in any industry. Axion introduced what it believes is an internet-first: “Axion Banner Concerts.” The bank streamed rock concerts — real live-gigs — within the frames of traditional banner ads. There’s no easier way to explain it. You just have to see it.

First, Axion started with a contest to select 25 young, up-and-coming bands. Then they invited each of these bands to perform live on a specially-constructed sound stage. The filmed concert was broadcast live, and streamed onto popular Gen-Y websites in a complex media plan. Axion provided an “embed” option so bands could easily incorporate performances into their websites, fan blogs and social network pages.

BAND PLAYS CONCERT IN LEADERBOARD SIZE BANNER AD
Click on the ad to play the concert and see how it works or view the performance on YouTube.

TIM VAN HAMEL – “GARDEN OF WEEDS”
Click on the ad to play the concert or watch it on YouTube.

Clicking on one of the banner ads would drive visitors to the Banner Concert microsite, where the public could vote for their favorite among the 25 bands. The winner got to perform a live gig at Ancienne Belgique, one of Belgium’s biggest concert halls, with live streaming on an Axion Web-TV channel.

Axion supported the Banner Concert series with a mix of media, including emails, an ad on MTV, and by spreading posters in music stores, CD shops, bars and restaurants. The Banner Concert campaign was developed by agency Boondoggle.

The campaign’s results are impressive:

• 6,807,442 banner impressions on well known internet sites
• The “embed” option on bands’ fan pages and blogs generated another 43,479 impressions.
• 44,845 unique visitors hit the campaign’s microsite.
• 7,581 people voted for their favorite band, more than half utilizing a SMS text-based voting option via their mobile phones.

The campaign won several awards, including 5 Golden Lions in Cannes. For the Banner Concert project’s innovative use of online technologies, its creativity, imagination and the bank’s utter commitment to a Gen-Y audience, The Financial Brand is also bestowing one of its Breakthrough Brand Awards to Axion. Great work and congratulations!

PROMOTIONAL POSTER

CAMPAIGN MICROSITE
Each banner ad led to a microsite showcasing a collage of all 25 bands’ performances. There the public could vote for their favorite show. There’s a little navigation strip at the bottom of the site with links to Axion, but the Axion brand should probably be more prominent. You might not ever know this was a promo hosted by a bank.

Bands play their concerts on a stage that was exactly the same proportions as traditional online banner ads. The idea to have bands perform — quite literally – within the confines of a banner ad is simply brilliant. Concerts were filmed and produced by Mojuice. The sets were developed by Stakka Concepts.

VIDEO CASE STUDY
A 3-minute YouTube video summarizes the entire project nicely,
including some behind-the-scenes footage.

Some may question Sir Richard Branson’s timing. Why would he launch a bank now?

Well, for starters, Branson is exceptionally good with money. Who better to run a bank than a guy who makes money almost faster than it can be printed?

But there’s a more serious and strategic reason Branson is launching a new financial brand right now: Every financial institution established prior to the credit crisis has, in the consumer’s eyes, a somewhat tarnished brand. People are apt to lump most pre-2009 financial brands into the same category, at least to some degree, making them share equal bits of blame. Guilt through complicit complacency, if nothing else.

Why do you think consumers have responded so enthusiastically to Ally Bank? Folks don’t really know/care that Ally is simply a reskinned GMAC. People love the fact that the bank is fresh and funny. It’s a new brand, so it’s new to them.

Reality Check: The financial industry is ripe for new “challenger brands” to come in and rock the status quo.

Branson’s announcement that he is expanding Virgin Money to become a full-fledged bank — with branches! — undoubtedly shocked those in the financial industry. If you’re like any of those Branson has challenged before, you’re probably reacting with a mix of anxious excitement and fearful nausea.

The Virgin brand — in any industry — is known for shaking things up. Branson loves doing things that everyone else says shouldn’t- or couldn’t be done. He takes chances. But when it’s all done (usually with great success), everyone looks back and admires Virgin’s unique flair. It’s a stylish and sexy combination of courage and cunning that reflects the cavalier playboy behind the brand.

And the same thing is bound to happen in the financial industry. But don’t despair; there is a silver lining. A few years from now, everyone will be thanking Virgin for coming along and loosening up banking. Branson will burn banking’s figurative (yet ever so restrictive and uncomfortable) bra, and liberated financial marketers will owe Virgin their gratitude for defining the new extremes of “what’s acceptable.” Financial marketers will be able to rationalize their crazy new ideas by pointing to Virgin and saying, “See! At least we’re not that far out there!”

If you doubt Virgin’s powers of disruption, all you have to do is look at what the brand has already done in other industries. These guys are smart marketers, crazy innovators, and they know how to execute. They are creative, provocative and obsess over details. Just look. These guys bring their A-game every day, something that should scare everyone in retail banking. Their sometimes lewd nature may not appeal to everyone, but then again, the best brands never do.

Much like this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, The Financial Brand could bestow a “Breakthrough Brand Award” for what the Virgin Bank brand will likely achieve. But that feels a tad premature, so we’ll wait and see what comes next.

Every time you start to think the financial industry’s fixation with Twitter may be easing, something completely new comes along and shakes things up. Like this stunner: TweetMyMoney, a new fully-proprietary innovation from Vantage Credit Union that allows people to access account information and make transfers via Twitter.

With the revolutionary new service, members can check their account balances, deposits, withdrawals, holds and cleared checks with simple commands. They can also transfer funds within their accounts. And it can all be done through Twitter for free.

You could call it “Twitter 2.0″ for financial institutions.

Instant Registration, Easy Utilization

Once you’re an online banking user with Vantage Credit Union, you can register for TweetMyMoney instantly. You can do both online.

Then all you do to make it work is send a direct message with a basic command to Vantage Credit Union’s Twitter account (twitter.com/myvcu).

There are seven basic functions TweetMyMoney performs:

• #bal – Reports balances for as many as five different types of deposit accounts
• #15d – Returns the last 5 deposits, including the date posted.
• #15w – Returns the last 5 withdrawals, including the date posted.
• #15c – Returns the last 5 checks to clear, including the check number and date cleared.
• #15t – Returns the last 5 transactions, including the date posted.
• #holds – Reports any active point-of-sale (POS) holds on the account, including the name of the merchant and the amount of the hold. Hotels are one type of merchant that commonly put holds on debit cards. The amount of the hold counts against your balance, which, if you didn’t know about it, could trigger overdraft fees.
• #tran – Allows a member to transfer money between their deposit accounts. A transfer can only be make between various accounts held by a specific member. Money cannot be transferred to any external third-party.

How registered users can request their balance by sending a direct message to Vantage within Twitter.

What Vantage sends to someone who requests their balance via Twitter.
Note: In this example, the member has 4 separate accounts (numbered 0, 6, 7 and 9).
The #bal command returned balances for each of the four accounts.

There’s an online video that should give you a pretty good idea of how the system would look and work from the end-user’s perspective.

TweetMyMoney Overview Video

In fact, there’s no shortage of tutorial videos and documentation. Most curious parties should be able to get most — if not all — of their questions answered by reviewing the library of materials Vantage provides:

• How to register for tweetMyMoney account access via Twitter
• How to send tweetMyMoney banking commands
• Transfer example
• Enrollment instruction screenshots
• Commands instruction screenshots
• tweetMyMoney Commands reference document
• tweetMyVantage FAQs
• Correspondence Authentication Codes explained

How Secure Is It?

If you’re like most people, you’ll immediately wonder about the security of such a system. But Vantage seems to have done a good job ensuring its new system is secure. The credit union devised its own Correspondence Authentication Codes that puts a special six-digit “signature” in digital communications such as eAlerts, eStatements, and, of course, banking information delivered via Twitter. It’s a very slick yet simple idea that is summarized in a short video. As a method to ensure authentic eCommunications, it’s really worth studying:

Correspondence Authentication Codes Explained

The real security within the TweetMyMoney platform is that money can only be transferred between accounts held by a single member. There’s no way to use TweetMyMoney to deliver — or pry with malice — funds externally.

And if the TweetMyMoney Twitter account is ever hacked, Vantage says the hacker wouldn’t have access to any private or sensitive information. Tweets sent directly to members aren’t saved, and private messages from members would only contain meaningless commands. There really wouldn’t be much for a hacker to utilize. (Of course, a hacker controlling a financial institution’s Twitter profile doesn’t need anything else to wreak havoc and steal people’s money.)

Four-Prong Strategy

In an interview with The Financial Brand, Eric Acree, EVP/Vantage Credit Union says TweetMyMoney is the first step in a four-prong strategy centered around mobile banking. Vantage chose Twitter to debut its online banking offering because it was “the easiest and least expensive” option.

In phase two, the credit union plans on unveiling essentially an identical set of features and services via Facebook, which Acree thinks should be ready around Q1 next year.

Further on the horizon, in phase three, Vantage is considering introducing SMS- or text-based banking from mobile phones. In the fourth and final stage, Vantage wants to unveil an iPhone application. Acree says no plans have been finalized yet.

“It something we have to carefully consider.”

Acree says it took only three months to conceive and deploy TweetMyMoney, but says most of the credit belongs to Vantage Credit Union’s chief “Technovation Guy,” Cam Minges.

Is 4,000 Users Realistic?

Acree says the strategy is designed to target a younger demographic with services they find attractive.

“Seventy percent of our new members are under 40,” Acree points out.

With over 100,000 members, Vantage is hoping TweetMyMoney will ultimately have a base of around 4,000 users.

“We have about 30,000 to 40,000 members using online banking today,” Acree says. “We’d be extremely pleased if we could get 5-10% of those to start using TweetMyMoney.”

Despite his optimism, Acree is not blind to the realities of launching Twitter-based banking.

“We know this isn’t a mass-market service,” he admits.

Inasmuch, Acree doesn’t expect the credit union’s more exotic flavors of mobile banking to appeal to everyone.

“People will have one of two reactions to TweetMyMoney,” Acree predicts. “They’ll either think, “Wow, that’s awesome!’ or, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s stupid!’”

“And that’s what we anticipate will happen when we roll out our Facebook application,” he reflects candidly.

What Lies Ahead?

For many months now, the retail financial industry has found Twitter both fascinating and puzzling. A few financial institutions have enjoyed some success offering customer service through Twitter, but the vast majority have struggled to integrate the popular social media tool into their marketing in any meaningful way.

Earlier this summer, ING Direct Canada launched its FeeTweeter service, the first-ever Twitter application from a financial institution. Now, with the launch of TweetMyMoney, it seems the financial industry is taking Twitter to a whole new level. It makes you wonder, “What’s next?”

In northern Spain, there’s a bank that really gets branding. It’s called Caja Navarra, or CAN for short, and they could show community banks in the United States a thing or two about what’s really possible with “community banking.”

They didn’t just slap a bunch of generic principles together and call it a brand strategy. CAN has wrapped itself entirely around one, two-word concept: Civic Banking. The brand strategy is built solely around transparency, accountability and, above all, social responsibility.

Never before has The Financial Brand seen a bank so fully embrace a singular idea as much as CAN, for which Caja Navarra earns itself a Breakthrough Brand Award. In fact, there’s so many ways in which Caja Navarra lives out it’s “civic banking” strategy that it’s hard to find them all (much less remember to write about them).

The CAN website starts by detailing five “rights” they believe their customers are entitled to:

1. Know how much money the bank makes off of them.
2. Know and decide how customers’ deposits are put to work by the bank.
3. Determine how the bank’s profits are used to support socially-responsible projects.
4. Know what progress is being made by the socially-responsible projects the bank supports.
5. Help out by volunteering — giving their time and energy (not just their money) to socially-responsible programs.

You’d expect CAN, a bank centered around the community, to utilize social media…and they do. You can find Caja Navarra on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Friendfeed. And they are active — very active. They’ve tweeted over 2,000 times and have more than 500 followers. They have over 250 photos on Flickr.

The bank also has what it touts as “the largest social network in Spain,” including the CAN Civic Banking Community, where there are over 1,000 blogs about various socially-responsible projects.

The bank has more social networks (maybe too many to count). Here are some of the bank’s proprietary social media projects, all bearing the Caja Navarra brand:

• Volcan – more than 10,000 volunteers look for- and participate in volunteering opportunities in Spain or around the world
• Eurecan – network and community of entrepreneurs, including its own blog
• Tribucan – educational community
• Pluralcan – dedicated to helping women in the workplace
• Estoyenlista.com – a hybrid P2P lending effort

It’s not all just about the online community though. The bank has around 250 representatives that are fully mobile and will come to people’s homes. The bank has also redesigned its branches to function as community spaces. Anyone can walk in and surf the net for free. And one day a week, each branch hosts a public event like a concert, magic show, theater production or children’s book reading.

Customers Control the Profits

With CAN’s “You Choose, You Decide” program, customers can choose up to three general categories or specific projects within them. There are nine different categories: disability and welfare, research, cooperation, environment, employment and entrepreneurs, culture, preservation of heritage, sports and leisure. Customers can submit a project, or review other projects to see which ones they’d like to support.

Each time a customer gets a product or service from Caja Navarra, they choose where the profits will be spent, making customers feel with the bank and their community.

80% of customers choose where and how 30% of the bank’s profits are used. Last year 500,000 CAN customers decided how EUR 50 million would be distributed to over 2,700 projects. As of 2005, CAN customers decide where 100% of the bank’s socially-responsible spending goes.

In an effort to be completely transparent, CAN sends each customer an annual statement showing how much the bank made in profits, and what, exactly, the bank did with those profits.

Feedback & Measurement

CAN created an online survey so they can hear from customers how well they are doing with delivering on their ideals. It’s a great survey, and worth a look.

They also took the standard, academic, predictable survey questions you’d expect and phrased them in a way customers can actually relate to, an accomplishment that’s all the more impressive when you realize English isn’t this bank’s native language. One question with a 1-10 rating scale reads, “”At CAN, they are grateful when I complain or demand explanations for a mistake they have committed.”

There’s another section of the website where you are invited to “vialoga” with Can. It’s another feedback mechanism, where customers are asked questions like, “What would you do if you were the manager/manageress of a branch of CAN?”

Reality Check: You can say your brand is about anything you like, but if you aren’t measuring yourself according to the principles you espouse — like CAN is doing — then your brand strategy is basically meaningless.

Bottom Line: Between 2001 and 2007 Caja Navarra moved from 41st to 4th in return on equity, 20th to 12th in after-tax profits, and from 16th to 5th in margin per employee compared to other Spanish banks.

The Caja Navarra Website
You can get lost exploring all the various aspects, angles and components of “Civic Banking” on the CAN website, which has almost entirely been translated into English.

Virtual Host
Despite being both helpful and quite charming, the website’s ever-present virtual host cannot be muted so you may hear the same recording many times.

Caja Navarra’s “Civic Banking Community
Just one of the successful and vibrant online social media sites the bank has created.

Community Facilities
Customers can reserve and use special community meeting rooms in CAN’s 400 branch locations, what the bank calls “Cancha Offices.” There’s a cool, interactive tour of the facilities online, but it’s in Spanish.

Interactive History
One of the coolest interactive histories you’ll ever see for a financial institution.

Cancha Magazine
Cancha is CAN’s magazine about civic banking. It is solely focused on the bank’s values and how it lives them out. Cancha has multiple definitions and connotations. It can mean something like a “forum,” a “stadium” or a “field.” It can also mean “your element” (as in “está en su cancha,” or “he’s in his element, as well as a rough translation to “street cred.” Whatever the case, CAN has Cancha. Lots of it.

Deutsche Bank built a revolutionary BRANCH PROTOTYPE back in 2005, something it named Q110. Besides being a gorgeous architectural statement, the branch is one of the most progressive you’ll see anywhere in the world, combining most — if not all — of the latest ideas and newest innovations in financial retailing.

Before you read any further, go to this website and take the bank’s virtual tour. The branch could have been dull and boring and this interactive tour would still be awesome. Other banks have done virtual tours of their branches before, but never one this cool.

There are four “hot spots” you can move to within the virtual tour. In each hot spot, you can rotate your view 360° with your mouse. And not just left and right rotation. If you want to look at the ceiling, go for it. You can even zoom in [SHIFT key] and zoom out [CTRL key].

To make bank products more tangible, Q110 customers shop for financial products in off-the-shelf boxes, like in a supermarket. But Deutsche didn’t settle for a typical retail box (like Jyske or BNZ). Deutsche opted for tins. (See detail photo near the bottom of this article.) Very classy, very cool and probably very few are thrown away once they get home.

But that’s not all Deutsche Bank is retailing. They’ve got windowed storefronts displaying shelves full of soaps, candles, games, lotions, magnets, glass figurines, piggy banks, handbags, portfolios and logowear from just about every football club in Europe.

You can almost hear the bank’s salespeople saying, “What a lovely purse! Would you like a checking account with that today? There’s a discount if you get both.”

Reality Check: Most banks are good at warehousing money, but they aren’t nearly prepared to operate a retail store that includes challenges like “inventory” and “shrinkage.”

The Q110 name is short for Quartier 110, a mixed-use building on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. Friedrichstrasse is a major European shopping Mecca, so the branch’s heavy retail theme and product displays should help pull a curious and unsuspecting public off the streets and into the branch.

Occupying an impressive 13,500 square feet (1,260 square meters), Deutsche Bank’s Q110 is being used as a platform for testing new branch features and technologies. The bank planned on rolling out successful Q110 elements including the Trendshop, lounge, product tins, and private advisory rooms to its other branches in Munich and Aachen.

But wait, there’s more.

As if the virtual tour wasn’t enough, the bank even took their Q110 concept to SecondLife. You can see a video about it on YouTube.

The architectural design firm on the project was Schwitzke & Partner, who has nine more photos of the project at their website.

This beautiful and innovative BRANCH PROTOTYPE is unquestionably deserving of a Breakthrough Brand Award from The Financial Brand.

The vestibule has an optional concierge station.
The seating arrangement drives traffic left of the greeter.

The lounge has a half dozen sofas and seating for at least 30 people.

A close-up view of the lounge. There’s a full espresso bar, with seating for 6 more.
Notice the library of books.

The Q110 branch includes what Deutsche Bank calls the “Trendshop.”
You can buy various items for the home, family or the office. Oddly, the signs are in English.

Within the Trendshop, Deutsche Bank retails items
from around Europe, including popular sports teams.
The bank rotates various big brand, major label retail items on a regular basis.

Bank employees circulate openly as a sales cleark might do in a regular store.
They present and discuss products with customers face-to-face.

A plasma screen near the entrance shows which employees are working that day.
The headline “Ihre Ansrechpartner” literally translates to “Your Greeting Partners.”
You’ve got to love Maxi’s title in the picture (above): “Produktinnovationen.”

The open floor plan almost entirely eliminates walls, counters and other barriers.

A foosball table? That’s the second foosball table to show up in an article about branches
here at The Financial Brand in the last two weeks.

Tip of the Hat: To Casey Davis, who, in addition to Deutsche’s Q110, also wanted everyone to see this supercool branch from Jyske. Another tip of the hat to the Europeans, who seem to be leading this year’s Branch Design Ryder Cup.

In the Danish market, Jyske Bank has introduced a whole new way of delivering financial services, using the theme “Jyske Differences.” Jyske says its “blazing new trails in interior design” with its branches, something that’s hard to argue with after you watch this video:

Jyske’s bank of the future is as imaginative as what Umpqua did with their “branch-of-the-future” video a few years ago. The concept centers around financial products that are presented in physical packages.

Here are some of the highlights:

• They call the branch a “shop.”
• The branch features a conceirge, called the AskBar.
• They are using a hotel-style check-in desk as their transaction/teller station(s), something they call the MoneyBar.
• They call the area between the various bars The Market Square. That’s where you’ll find Theme Island, with stacks of financial products packaged in boxes (see The Financial Brand’s previous coverage of BNZ’s pre-packaged, boxed financial products).
• They have a TestBar, where you can scan any of the boxed products for an on-screen tutorial.
• The branch has an Oasis, something that looks a lot more like a reading room than the waiting room it would be in a regular branch.
• Jyske says it wants to be known for its “good coffee,” so they’ve placed their CoffeeBar next to full-length windows surrounding the branch.

Key Question: Can anyone explain the catfish on the wall that “sets the mood” and “tells the history” of the bank?

The Financial Brand is honoring Jyske Bank with a Breakthrough Brand Award for having a very cool video about an incredible branch with great design and more features than one can list in a single article. Jyske could open a branch in any city in the Western world and wow just about everyone. I mean, come on: Who can possibly resist a conference room table made out of a foosball table? By the way, the conference room has a name too: Inspiration.

That’s an understatement.

Tip of the Hat: To Casey Davis, for bringing Jyske Bank to The Financial Brand’s attention.

With economic upheaval on Wall Street, many Americans are looking for answers on a wide range of financial matters. O Bee Credit Union is telling people to “Get lost!” Literally. In a maze.

O Bee Credit Union has partnered with a local newspaper and the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions to create one of the most original, most creative and most engaging financial-education promotions ever attempted.

The credit union’s name, “O BEE,” is the centerpiece of a massive, 6-acre maze made from corn. They call it “The Amazing Money Maze.”

The “Amazing Money Maze” from O Bee Credit Union. Look closely. There are two bridges.

There are two separate corn mazes, a 1.2-mile maze and a 1.8-mile maze. In each maze there are six checkpoints. As participants work their way through one of two mazes, they try to answer questions at different checkpoints about savings, budgeting, investing, debt, credit, identity theft, retirement, college, insurance, credit score, checking/debit and housing. Each checkpoint has a question for adults, teens and children.

After reviewing the questions and answers, participants get their checkpoint card punched to enter to win a weekly drawing for movie tickets, iPods, savings bonds, piggybanks, bags of shredded money, museum prizes, martial arts lessons, dance lessons and other stuff kids dig.

The maze is created by the hyper-imaginative folks at the Rutledge Corn Maze. In previous years, the farm’s mazes have been more conventional in their design, but still cool nonetheless.

Admission is $7. The maze is currently “haunted” for the Halloween season. Oooooh spooky!

This multi-way co-promotion is also a fund-raiser for programs that help promote financial education throughout the credit union’s communities.

If you want to see more, check out the website they’ve got set-up at amazingmoneymaze.com.

O Bee: One A Mazing Brand

An incredibly engaging financial education promo isn’t the only thing the O Bee brand has to be proud of. For instance, the “O Bee” name name is great.

For starters, it’s highly unusual, which not only helps the credit union get noticed and stand out, it allows them to have the ultra-simple web address obee.com. But the name makes sense too. You see, it’s the phonetic spelling of “O.B.,” short for “Olympia Brewing.” The credit union, the 99th ever started in the country, was originally founded in 1955 to serve the employees of Olympia Brewing.

The ‘O Bee’ name, logo and slogan all work together
to help create a rich and interesting brand story.

The credit union’s slogan, “Refreshingly Familiar,” is refreshingly unique for the financial industry. The slogan says the credit union is a comfortable place to do business, while simultaneously suggesting they have a personality and approach unlike “those other guys.”

For cutting through the clutter by carving their unique name into a cornfield, O Bee is getting a Breakthrough Brand Award from The Financial Brand.