Readers have spoken. Roughly 500 votes were cast, and we have our winners, including two new speakers added to the Forum 2014 agenda. Special thanks to Currency, the integrated marketing firm that hosted the Speaker Wildcard Challenge for The Financial Brand.
Wildcard Winner: Vanessa Foster, Director of Marketing for Sunova
Session Title: The Secrets Behind The Sunova Brand
Thursday, April 3
3:15 – 4:15
Sunova’s approach to marketing and advertising is a little quirky compared to other banks and credit unions. Vanessa will share the Sunova brand story and demonstrate how their marketing strategies have produced record-breaking results for the organization. Vanessa will show financial marketers the benefits of taking marketing risks and how to view their brands from a new perspective. This session includes a number of campaign case studies and advertising examples. What you’ll learn:
- How the Sunova brand and brand strategy was developed and launched
- Why Sunova uses St. Bernard dogs as the centerpiece of its brand identity
- How they leverage their brand to expand into new markets
- How Sunova’s marketing department generated $50 million in new mortgage loans in seven weeks with a campaign budget of less than $25,000
- How they continually build their brand internally and get staff buy-in
Wildcard Winner: Ben Pankonin, CEO/Founder of Social Assurance
Session Title: Selling on Social, Marketing Through Sales
Friday, April 4
1:00 – 2:00
Social Media is built on relationships. Banks and credit unions are best when they are building positive relationships in the community. And building relationships through social media means having adequate resources for marketers (technology), building a strategy, metrics for social selling (ROI), and gaining enterprise-wide buy-in (plan). Ben will show financial marketers how to implement solutions and strategies that go beyond traditional tactics and actually start moving the needle.
This session will utilize research analyzing several thousand social interactions between financial institutions and consumers. This aggregated data shows what banks and credit unions are actually doing with social media today, and reveals much about building 1-to-1 relationships.
What you’ll learn:
- How to develop an enterprise-wide social plan
- The right metrics financial marketers need to use to gauge success social success
- An understanding of how social marketing in the banking space is evolving along with technology
Matt Davis, Co-Founder of 6th Story, will attend the Forum with our compliments.
Jim Perry, Senior Strategist with Market Insights, scored an iPad Mini from Currency.