Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!When financial marketers bring up new media tools, it’s quite common for CEOs to ask questions like, “What’s the ROI of having a blog?” Marketers say, “It doesn’t cost anything” (which isn’t really true). From there, the argument often devolves into subjective differences and a matters of. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Piggy banks are an international symbol for “savings.” They have been used as fun, friendly creative devices by financial marketers for years. If piggy banks weren’t dead at the outset of the economic meltdown, they were probably on their way. With the relative value of loose change. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!“If there’s anything that could dislodge a customer, a merger is it.” — Anita Gentle Newcomb Banking Consultant Economic turmoil and the crisis in the financial industry has created an upheaval in deposits of epic proportions. Many financial institutions smell blood. But to others, the idea of. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!“Deposits are the lifeblood of banks.” — Bob Chapman, President Bank of the James These days, you hear about a lot of financial institutions seeing huge increases in their deposits. Some financial institutions are seeing their deposits double over last year. Even JPMorgan Chase, an international megabank,. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!No matter how the financial rescue plan unfolds, the financial industry as a whole will not go back to the way it was. This challenging economic climate provides a historic opportunity for the credit union industry to step out from the shadow of banks and take a. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE! It looks like a fresh-baked biscuit. But it’s really a direct mail piece (pictured above) sent out by Countybank down in South Carolina. (You can see the inside of the mailer below.) This clever campaign, targeting businesses in the bank’s area, offers new business customers a. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Westpac Bank in Australia took a plain-looking red booth, something it calls the Truth Pod, around to various locations across Sydney. People who ventured into the unbranded booth were asked what annoyed them about banks. Apparently, the answer was fees. Fees, fees, fees. Westpac filmed the whole. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!The average marketing budget for most financial institutions (banks or credit unions) at any asset size should be around 0.1% of total assets. BofA, at $1.9 trillion, budgets $2.0 billion for marketing which is almost exactly 0.1%. Many factors affect this guideline — up or down —. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!The Bank of New Zealand, now known simply as BNZ, has been doing some interesting things with their brand lately. They’re retailing off-the-shelf financial products – literally, in boxes. They’ve got an intensive mass-media campaign starring a herd of animated piggybanks. And to cap it all off,. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Be honest. If you didn’t work in the financial services industry, how often would you step foot in a branch? So how can financial institutions build relationships with those who prefer avoiding branches as much as possible? Here’s four ideas to get you started. Pick up the. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE! United Community FCU just gave brand new 2009 Chevrolet HHRs to 17 employees. The cars, wrapped from bumper to bumper with credit union graphics, cost $380,000. To pay for the campaign, the credit union is slashing its marketing budget in half. Each employee is required to. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Check out this interesting article that came out yesterday, 10 Things Your Bank Won’t Tell You. It’s a candidly cynical perspective on financial marketing, and attacks many of the common messages financial institutions use in their advertising. Here’s the list: 1.) “Our branches are there to sell. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Human beings, as intelligent and sophisticated as we like to think we are, are actually highly emotional creatures. Every decision we make is made for emotional reasons. Those are the real reasons. We then back-up those decisions with logical justifications — the “good reasons.” If you think. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!There’s an old adage in financial marketing: “It’s all about the rate.” Recent evidence from two different case studies suggests that’s wrong. Case Study #1 Take BankWest’s promotion to launch a new savings account, where they tested two versions of their online ads. Both versions of the. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!There’s a lot of talk in the financial industry about “growing relationships” with a Gen-Y audience. Here’s two things you should be doing. #1 – Don’t ignore them. “But we’re not!” you protest. “We have defined Gen-Y as an important part of our future strategy.” Great. But. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Bank of America recently announced that it was introducing its first ever NASCAR-themed ad. The 30 second spot titled “Who’s Your Driver?” features footage of a number of top NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers whose likenesses are available on NASCAR Banking check cards and credit cards. Dale. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Financial institutions are falling all over each other trying to attract Gen-Y consumers. But what about Gen X? It doesn’t seem like financial institutions care all that much about Gen X. Why is that? Here’s the explanation. Gen Y represents the future — the highly-coveted credit-driven market.. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!North Island Credit Union in San Diego has taken interactive advertising a step further. Two steps, actually. With your feet. This isn’t your typical “interactive advertising” (as in the “online” kind). The credit union has teamed up with Reactrix, a company specializing in interactive video floor displays.. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!In this press release, Personal Care America FCU announces three new savings products. G.R.A.D. – “Getting Ready for A Degree” A savings account that is available to members wishing to save money for future education. It can be used personally for the individual or for any family. Read More
Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Three business professors did a formal experiment after reading an article about Net Promoter Scores (NPS). They did two separate studies: one involving 9,900 customers of a telecom company, and another involving 6,700 customers of a financial institution. Their conclusions were published in the Harvard Business Review. Read More