HotHouse makes brands work for people online

It’s commonly held wisdom that once you choose a bank, you stick with it. Your bank moves with you through life’s stages - offering you everything from student loans, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, investment loans - the whole kit and caboodle.

Banks and financial services institutions are fully aware that the lifetime value of a penniless student can be substantial, and naturally there’s fierce competition.

Of course the financial services industry has been highly sophisticated in targeting this customer segment developing a range of products and services to suit their needs.

But marketing to these students is a whole new ball game. They don’t use the media we’ve always used, they don’t want to be interrupted and they are turned off by advertising.

Today’s students have grown up with technology, and have a preference for blogs, podcasts, wikis and Instant Messaging. They are extremely high users of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

They depend on referrals from credible sources like friends and family or even trusted brands and blogs.

It’s commonly held wisdom that once you choose a bank, you stick with it. Your bank moves with you through life’s stages - offering you everything from student loans, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, investment loans - the whole kit and caboodle.

Banks and financial services institutions are fully aware that the lifetime value of a penniless student can be substantial, and naturally there’s fierce competition.

Of course the financial services industry has been highly sophisticated in targeting this customer segment developing a range of products and services to suit their needs.

But marketing to these students is a whole new ball game. They don’t use the media we’ve always used, they don’t want to be interrupted and they are turned off by advertising.

Today’s students have grown up with technology, and have a preference for blogs, podcasts, wikis and Instant Messaging. They are extremely high users of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

They depend on referrals from credible sources like friends and family or even trusted brands and blogs.

Furthermore, traditional banking brands are having to compete with a slew of online financial services sites that embody the trends, technologies and connections that have been adopted by the 18-25 year old demographic.

New entrants like p2p lending sites, and online banks are exploiting new distribution channels to win customers with better products, rates and service.

New financial channels like mobile phones and the Web and technologies like chat and SMS continue to change consumers’ financial behaviour, encouraging cross-channel interactions.

Financial services marketers have to move into the online places that young people inhabit. Using social networks is all about making your content accessible to people online. And this means above and beyond your website. Which is of course is quite a mindset shift - your online content strategy needs to embrace the sites where your customers enjoy spending time.

And you’ve got to provide them with relevant information and speak to them in a way that’s respectful and in tune with who they are and how they communicate on and offline.

No wonder then that banks are starting to move into Facebook.

Currently most of Facebook’s revenue comes from banner ads placed by Microsoft but it also directly sells more innovative marketing concepts like sponsored profiles, and user groups as well as providing companies with a platform to create tools and services. Last year, Chase was well ahead of the pack when it negotiated a one-year exclusive deal on Facebook to market its credit cards to students. More recently TD Canada Trust launched its own Facebook user group called the TD Money Lounge to communicate with students, and another Canadian bank, the Royal Bank of Canada has its RBC Campus Connection.

Backing up this activity, some interesting data from Hitwise showed that Facebook currently ranks 20th in terms of delivering traffic to retail websites including banks and that four percent of people leave Facebook to go to an online retail site.

So the challenge for banks on Facebook is to ensure that the experience there complements and reinforces the brand.

This hasn’t quite worked to plan for HSBC. Students in the UK recently bandied together, forming a group on Facebook called “Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off”. More than 4000 students voiced their anger over HSBC starting to charge them for overdrafts on their student loans. The group won wide publicity with coverage on and offline in all the major media outlets manifesting a PR disaster for HSBC. Such was the backlash, HSBC abandoned its plans.

There’s more to social media than Facebook

Although the Royal Bank of Canada has already formed a user group on Facebook, their social media strategy has evolved far beyond just that.

Indeed Canada’s leading retail bank, recently posted an ad on Craigslist. It states: “Students? Tired of mopping floors and flipping burgers for minimum wage to pay for school? RBC has a solution for you! We’re looking for 6 university or college students to write an online blog about money as it relates to you, as a student!”

Until the 31st October, the bank is accepting online video applications for six student blogger positions at its new website. Once hired, the bloggers will initiate and coordinate online discussions on the new RBC p2p website. In true net generation style, the final six will chosen by their peers, who can vote on their favourite video audition at the website. It’s being billed as a site for students by students.

A student like me

RBC’s idea is that college kids can learn about things like budgeting, savings and investments, from people who are going through the same things them.

With a tone and style that is very non-bank, RBC p2p promises to provide an online forum where students can speak openly and honestly about their financial issues, struggles and concerns. All content will be driven by students and the six new student hires will manage discussions, blog about their own banking experiences, and share information about money issues.

In RBC’s media release announcing the launch, Michel Savoie, who is hosting the RBC p2p site and leading the blogging team said: “I see RBC p2p as a place where students can share stories and experiences and talk about solutions that will work for them - and what better way to do that than with a site for students, managed by students.”

It will be interesting to see how the site develops once the bloggers are on board, but it’s a really nice and innovative use of social media.

More and more consumer brands are making effective use of online to get their message across to their customers, as Simon van Wyk writes.

Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a US-based media investment bank (that’s a politically correct term for private equity firm), recently published the 21st edition of its seminal Communications Industry Forecast report, and there were a couple of gems buried in the report among all the CAGRs and GDPs of the detail.

The first is that for the first time in nearly 10 years, average consumer media consumption dropped slightly - 0.5% - in 2006, to just over 9 hours per day. The last time this figure declined was in 1997, when the Internet had yet to take off.

The VSS report attributes the decline to “digital media efficiencies”, which means people are watching a few minutes of YouTube instead of 30 minutes of news or comedy. This must be keeping TV programmers up at night - people are choosing to watch a college student dance in front of a webcam in their underwear instead of watching TV shows that have cost millions of dollars to produce.

Media use is expected to increase slowly over the next five years, driven largely by video gaming. Overall spending on communications media is predicted to grow by 6.7% per year over that period to US$1 trillion.

Here’s the other gem in the report: VSS predicts that by 2011, Internet advertising will surpass newspaper advertising as the largest ad medium. Alternative media spending is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 17.4% between now and 2011, while traditional advertising and marketing will only grow by 3.2 per cent. Internet advertising and marketing has finally come of age.

Another interesting conclusion from the VSS research was that although consumers spent less time with media in 2006 while at home, they spent more time using the media at work. VSS reports that usage by institutional end-users grew 3.2 percent to 260 hours per employee (an hour per workday).

“We are in the midst of a major shift in the media landscape that is being fuelled by changes in technology, end-user behaviours and the response by brand marketers and communications companies,” said VSS MD James Rutherfurd.

Note that he included brand marketer activity in his response. More brands these days are successfully using new media to extend their message to customers.

In Australia, the Coke Side of Life website complements the brand’s traditional media campaign, which has a quirky/retro theme. The website offers a myriad of interactive options such as Diet Coke films, footie dream teams, design your own Coke can, the Massive Red Lunchbox roadshow, telling you where to get a free lunch with your Coke, and a host of other activities.

It’s well-branded and has something to appeal to all parts of Coke’s demographic, but its strength is also its weakness - there are really too many things to choose from and it doesn’t deliver a strong message to any one part of its audience.

A simpler, if more bizarre, campaign is the Little Deviant site which was launched in the US by Toyota to promote its compact Scion xD. On the Gothic gaming-themed site, the user takes on the persona of the monster xD, who wages war against the conformist Sheeple.

As the opening chapter of the game commands: “Send the Sheeple from the streets. Knock the stuffing out of them and collect their blood. Turn that awful bleating into awesome bleeding.”

It’s clear that little old ladies aren’t the Scion xD’s target audience, but the site has proved to be a hit with, as marketing site ClickZ describes, xD’s target audience of “young, urban consumers who thrive on individuality and the unconventional.” It builds in enough car references in the games to get both brand messages and product features across to its audience. Unlike the Coke site, the Little Deviant site focuses on one message for one (key) part of its audience.

Another successful way to get a brand message across to lads online is to use toilet humour and sex appeal. The Mitchum Man website promoting the iconic deodorant brand has both in spades.

The armpit orchestra, where you can compose tunes based on the tones of underarm farts, is simple yet funny (well, at least to blokes). The proudly politically-incorrect Mitchum Man-o-Meter features a video quiz where, the more ‘manly’ your answers, the more clothes the quiz mistress sheds.

Apparently Mitchum has some products that are used by women, but this website is not designed for them. Like the Little Deviant site, it zeroes in on the most important part of its target audience and uses devices that evoke its key brand message.

One of the important differences about online marketing campaigns today compared to several years ago is that marketers finally seem to be getting the message that online should be an integrated component of a broad marketing campaign. They’ve now realised that the best way to extend their brand online is to keep their message and their activities consistent with their offline activities.

The active, interactive nature of the new media gives customers the chance to get familiar and bond with a product and a brand in a way they can’t do on television or in print. Whether it be games, entertainment or widgets, interactive content can build the relationship between a brand and its key customers.