As if this crappy business environment wasn’t enough, now they have us marketing wonks passing judgment on the wisdom of a 20-year/$400 million stadium naming rights package with the New York Mets. In fact, the rhetoric is getting so hot, they’ve considered pulling out.
Ah, it seems like just yesterday that nabbing a high profile sponsorship like this turned all of us marketers ‘operating out of a coin purse’ green with envy. Those big sponsorships and television campaigns not only came with a certain ‘wow factor,’ but they brought enough cache to attract even the most jaded financial advisor.
Unfortunately, it looks like Citi got to the party right after all the cool kids left!
(I’m particularly sensitive about the ‘day late/dollar short’ notion as my beloved Chicago White Sox offered up the last austere 80s brand stadium little more than 12 months before Camden Yards burst on the scene. Ugh.)
It’s not just Citi who stands in the line of fire. Think about all the money that was invested in sponsorship contracts long before the current financial environment reared its head. For a perfect example of that, look no further than the PGA’s forthcoming tournament schedule. It’s loaded with automakers and financial companies in the sponsors ranks. (In fact, is there anybody besides Jamie Farr who didn’t take government assistance? Ba-dum-bum!) And every week, the sponsors face the same risk as Citi–that the court of public opinion marries the bailout with the brand.
Do we think that these sponsorships are wrong? No we don’t. Though too frequently the decision to sign on is the result of big ego rather than sound economics. I do find sweet irony in the way financial product manufacturers are being flogged for how they market themselves at the very time that we’re trying to drum up demand.
SO WHERE DO FINANCIAL FIRMS TURN NOW? TRY SOCIAL SPONSORSHIP.
As you look to invest your sponsorship money, consider that your spend needs to be justified not just with your management, but with the public. The more you can put your investment to work for the common good (despite your properly capitalist motivation), the better it looks. The notion of this social sponsorship allows you to build your brand while aligning with endeavors and entities (on a national scale) that are viewed as constructive—versus superfluous.
Unlike commercial sponsorship, a social sponsorship lends your title support to a host of goodwill initiatives, from renewable energy and other green initiatives to the arts. And while a social sponsorship doesn’t bring as much entertainment cache as the traditional ones (lest you enjoy chasing those whale rapscallions around), it is immutable.
It’s going to be really hard for anybody to beat on the do-gooder and that’s squarely where marketers need to position themselves. That is, at least until the current environment passes.
The advertising hype surrounding this year’s Super Bowl game featured a first – a one-second ad for Miller beer. Talk about your short attention span!
While it didn’t appear on the actual broadcast, it was played during the weekend. If you didn’t see it (or even if you did and you blinked and missed half of it), the ad featured the now-famous pitchman Windell Middlebrooks as the Miller beer delivery man who touts Miller High Life as “a good honest beer at a tasty price.” Few brands in the world have the kind of awareness to pull off a one-second ad, but this memorable campaign by Miller has been running for several years with considerable media weight and recognition is high enough to merit a shot. Plus, the one-second ad did not have to do all the heavy lifting. In addition to the one-second ad, Miller ran a 30-second television ad the week prior to the game with the same delivery character joking about how ridiculously expensive it is to advertise on the “big game,” and that if Miller advertised they would only need “one-second.” In addition, Miller has a web site www.1secondad.com, and a considerable public relations campaign behind the one-second ad leading up to the game. A smart, well integrated campaign, and all great stuff!
In the financial service market few, if any, brands have the recognition or budget to pull off something like Miller did. But that’s no excuse for bad branding practices. Ask yourself, is your brand message working as hard for you as it could or should be?
The only way Miller was able to pull of this marketing effort (that in reality was far more than one-second), was by having a relevant, memorable, consistent and well integrated brand message. Most brands in the financial category miss the mark in at least one or two of these areas (some miss all four). Regardless of your budget or target audience, your brand message can and should be clicking in all four areas. In fact the lower your budget, the more important it is to have all your marketing efforts well orchestrated, relevant, memorable and consistent.
For help maximizing your brand’s potential, contact us.
With the publication of Beyond the Collateral (our late 2007 research initiative with FRC), we sounded the call for marketers to move away from a sole focus on sales support to accept more responsibility for strategic leadership at their firms. While our recent update of that research hints that progress is being made, we still see financial marketers being “dogged” by too many challenges in their quest to earn the “right to lead.”
This includes a lack of formal planning (while a bit more than half have a written marketing plan, few move beyond a tactical to-do list), little if any continuing marketing training (less than one-third of firms offer any) and a “tail-chasing” quarterly work cycle that not only distracts an outsize percent of marketing’s “human capital” but has the unintended consequence of reinforcing the reactive v. strategic stereotype that pervades the space.
If SwanDog is to be a thought leader in this new financial marketing paradigm, how can we do so without overloading the system? For the answer, we gathered our partners together with a single objective–wouldn’t it be cool if we could find a way to promote strategic marketing in a meaningful but short, fresh and entertaining way. The result is the DailyDog, a one-of-a-kind marketing planning widget that offers financial marketers of all levels a new marketing thought or idea every business day of the year.
We call these bite-size ideas “marketing consulting atoms.” The “less is more” trend has its roots in the progressive content standard of breaking content into ever smaller kernels as a way to foster greater readership and more meaningful information, adding oomph and effectiveness to your SEO efforts (see Rock The Boat Marketing).
From our research, we’ve categorized each DailyDog posting into one of six categories: Plan, Engage, Analyze, Budget, Train and Warnings (a way to alert you to important actions, news and must-read articles). You’ll even hear occasionally from SwanDog’s own poet laureate—Nipsy “Jack” Russell! The DD is designed for marketers of all levels. As such, we hope you’ll find something for everyone and recommend it to your marketing peers and friends.
Go fetch the widget now and follow the installation instructions. In minutes, you’ll find marketers’ new best friend.
When I first heard the suggestion that President-elect Barack Obama give up his Blackberry, I couldn’t help but mutter “damn you, Compliance.” That’s because it reminded me of the approach the financial industry has followed in policing new web-based communications. Their answer? “Put it away!”
To pretend like these tools don’t exist (or that they’ll somehow go away altogether) is no way to deal with communications opportunities that offer such immense benefit.
In the case of Obama, much of his campaign’s success in raising funds and building brand “fandom” grew from his use of new media to establish a conversation with his constituents and broaden his reach. His campaign was the first of its kind, a modern age integrated marketing effort that leaned successfully on every available communications opportunity, from e-mail to social networking to mobile. The quest to mitigate the risk involved in Obama using a Blackberry feels a bit like wishing our way backwards. (For even more views on Obama’s command of digital media, read our partner’s blog at Rock The Boat Marketing.)
In the case of investment management, the same risk-averse thinking holds true. Rather than recognizing the benefits of these new communications, most companies and their compliance areas are giving them the stiff arm. I’m not a practicing idiot—I understand the rationale. I just don’t think that it’s smart business in the long run.
So, when it comes to compliance and new media, we really do think it’s time for a change.
On Sunday, I saw aging media visionary Ted Turner whipping up book sales at a local college near my home. When asked about the future of newspapers, Turner quickly answered, “They’re obsolete.” When pressed why, his answer was that “There are better, more efficient ways to distribute information available to us.”
Financial CEOs and marketers—there are better ways of communicating with advisors and investors. And they are not going away. It’s time to tell your compliance organizations that their job is to figure it out.
First came the tortuous decline in the market. Next up, a corresponding decrease in year-end compensation.
To anyone paying attention, it should come as little surprise that year-end will be leaner than a Jenny Craig pot roast. In spite of the imminent frustration, this is no time to give up on financials as an employer. Come what may, compensation for financial marketers continues to exceed nearly every alternative. And there aren’t many of those “alternatives” to be found these days.
So what can you as a marketer be doing today to make sure there’s no repeat in ‘09? Get your ’09 budget prepared for the worst. The steep decline of the past six weeks won’t be fully reflected in asset manager revenues for months. However, it makes sense to take stock now of what’s essential and what belongs on the wish list. Do you really need common support across all products or can you cherry pick? Is there a technology solution available? Do you really need a whole suite of value-added offerings? A new product? Seriously.
By getting in front of the curve, you’ll score some points for demonstrating your ability to think like a business-person. Moreover, you’ll be taking action when you have the time to really think through your cuts strategically, rather than taking everything down unilaterally.
Review your use and depth of metrics. Are you measuring your marketing output? More importantly, are you validating your contribution to firm growth? If you expect to get yourself and your team paid, you need to demonstrate that you can make something happen. Start by getting the team together to determine what should be measured and how to get at the data. From there, put together a marketing dashboard and make time each month to review it with firm management. As the story goes…if that doesn’t work, make out three envelopes.
Continue to build your professional portfolio. This is an opportunity to grow yourself professionally. That means training. Take a minute to identify those areas where you think you could use some tuning up and get at it. At most firms, tuition reimbursement is still available. Also, as staff cuts are made, the specialist model gives way to one that favors the generalist. That means you’ll likely have the opportunity to work on a broader array of projects with more “face time” with management. By proving your mettle now, you’ll likely position yourself on an accelerated career plane as the environment improves.
As always, remember that difficult environments produce huge opportunity. Someday, you’ll be the grey hair who says, “I remember 2008.”
Just when it seemed impossible for the financial crisis to get worse, along comes year-end and the mutual fund industry’s capital gains announcement season. Ugh.
While many funds have managed to avoid gains, there remain many that will be forced—unless the federal government moves to provide relief—to explain a taxable event in a deeply down market. So how are you preparing to respond to your clients (both financial advisors and investors)?
When it comes to making these announcements, our position is to get it done “sooner rather than later.” By getting word out now, you’ll give advisors sufficient time to harvest losses for their clients. While you certainly don’t want to encourage redemptions, maintaining relationships is key. Further, for many, it makes a lot of sense.
Guard against following a business-as-usual routine for this year’s capital gains communications. Accelerate the timing of the announcement and review every word of your statement from the vantage point of financial advisors and shareholders who have survived the worst financial crisis in decades—and yet are still invested with your firm. Your communications need a deft touch and a lot of empathy.
It’s the start of second quarter and I know exactly what you and your marketing team are doing right now—updating sales literature!
We all know the drill. You put any chance of proactive marketing efforts on hold for 30 days while you circle the wagons, burn the midnight oil and update fact sheets, fact cards and brochures that require that current investment performance and portfolio information. At least the printers are happy!
But dude–why bother?
First, there’s little in those sales materials anymore that isn’t available right now 5 days into the month on Morningstar, Bloomberg or a half dozen other data providers have already posted. Performance? April 1. Holdings? April 15. Morningstar ratings? Now.
What’s worse is that most asset managers actually receive their data directly from these services and pipeline it into their data repository. Hmmm? In an industry where time to market is everything and all information commoditized by transparency, do we believe the numbers will look better in three weeks?
Second, over 1/3 of the stuff you are creating will be discarded anyway…after the sales team tells you that it’s crap and is too late.
One of my favorite stories involves a wholesaler friend who used to have his sales literature drop shipped for Tuesday arrival. When I asked him why he insisted on Tuesday, he noted that the UPS delivery guy knew to put the literature box on the curb next to his garbage can as pick up was on Tuesday. The benefit–he didn’t have to haul it out of the garage. OUCH!!!! More time to sell I presume.
Finally, back to the time to market theme. The web is a perfect vehicle for disseminating information that demands timeliness quickly, automatically and efficiently.
So lift your head up from the computer keyboard and stop playing the April Fool. Instead focus your marketing efforts on things that people can’t get everywhere—like your firm’s view of the markets.
Don’t look now, but somebody in mutual fund land (and investment management) better sit down at a typewriter (figuratively) and start to make the case for active management. A staple of the 80s and 90s, the “benefits of active management” story hasn’t been told very successfully since the great Y2K scare. And under the bed somewhere, there are lots of bogeymen waiting to pounce!
More and more, active managers are taking a beating in the press, with some suggesting that as few as 1 in 4 are able to beat their index. Even Legg Mason’s iconic Bill Miller stubbed his tootsie in 2006—albeit for the first time in 16 years (Now that’s one stud you’d like in your starting rotation!).
With sales of ETFs, indexing and top down allocations all “en fuego” as Everett would say, mutual funds may be quietly slipping into the “disintermediation crosshairs.” Unless somebody in marketing starts to make a case for all those expensive PMs, they both may find themselves going the way of the open outcry trading floor.
Do you still believe in active management?
Is anybody telling that story successfully?
Will the stranglehold that funds have held on retirement plans give way to ETFs and other “passive” investments?
Or is that blob under my bed just a giant dust bunny?
