For The Here and Now: Advice to Financial Marketers (originally published January 2009)
11/13/2009

Few will argue that we are in the throes of a crushing financial crisis in the U.S. The American economy, and likewise that of the world, struggles to come to terms with its real value.
Call it what you will: the credit crisis; the global recession; or the downturn, many see this as the result of a void of leadership in the U.S. The country has one president-elect and one lame duck president. One has momentum and no authority, the other has authority and no momentum. Inaction does not help.
“There is a leadership vacuum in the United States, and financial markets will not stabilize until the U.S. as a country comes to terms with the real situation,” one senior marketer at a major foreign-based investment bank recently noted.
This situation creates some good news and some bad. The good news is that in 1993, the U.S. home ownership rate was slightly more than 64 percent. Today, it is approximately 68 percent. The unfortunate side is that in this same period, the U.S. personal savings rate declined from 8 percent of income to about 2 percent. Consumers were left with no viable “Plan B” in the event the housing market tanked. But when it did, the institutions got involved by securitizing the loans. Consequently, a financial situation has evolved into an industry-wide crisis, spreading from the consumer level to the largest Wall Street institution with no end in sight.
No sector has been hit harder than financial. Its marketing sector must not only adapt, but in some cases, its role in the firm must be reinvented. The suddenness of the change is what has made the marketing challenge so pronounced. The S&P 500’s financial sector has gone from 16 percent growth in 2006 to -20 percent in 2007 and to a -51 percent in November 2008 (YTD). And in two months’ time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has retreated from 11,500 points to 7,500. For those financial marketers who communicate the value of these financial institutions, there are many challenges ahead of them.
Jon Mittnacht, director of global advertising at Citi Global Wealth Management, agrees. “We have an interesting challenge over the next 12 to 18 months because the market has been traumatized. I think of what’s happening as a ‘financial 9/11,’” he says.
Claiming responsibility is the essential first step to fixing any predicament. While there seems to be plenty of finger pointing, some key parties are ducking responsibility. This makes the healing process longer and more painful for all. My feeling is that the responsibility of the crisis belongs to several of the primary groups. It belongs to Washington politicians, it belongs to Wall Street executives, it belongs to the consumers who should have known better and it belongs to those other people along the way who oversold and underexplained significant consequences.
“I’m not trying to absolve the (financial) institutions of any blame,” says Mittnacht, “but I think if there was ever a crisis that was a combination of the greed of the institutions and the greed of the individuals who overextended themselves, that this is it. The politicians aren’t going to get elected by pointing fingers at the country and saying, ‘you shouldn’t be so greedy.’”
 
*     *     *     *     *
The Chinese word for “crisis” consists of two individual characters. The first translates, by itself, as “danger.” The second means “opportunity.” Of course, we see the danger in our current financial situation. Unfortunately, many financial firms and individuals have suffered at the hand of this danger. There is opportunity in our current economic environment. Because of it, financial marketing and marketers will enter a new, higher caliber of marketing in the not-so-distant future. It is characterized by terms such as transparency, efficiency, effectiveness and measurement. These are the institutions that will lead the economy back to firmer ground.
My view of our industry is Darwinian in perspective. In times of crisis, the strong will ultimately become stronger and these firms will lead us in the future. The weak will further weaken and eventually fade away, making room for new ideas and new leadership. Alas, this vision of our long term future does little to help financial marketers in the here and now.
So, the fundamental question remains: how do today’s financial services institutions make it through this current storm? How do they market their services and their value during this time of crisis and of uncertainty? I have several ideas.
 
1) Discover your true brand. Let your brand “be itself.”
As chief analyst of The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing, I spend plenty of time studying the trends and patterns of the industry. One of my functions is to speak with CMOs and marketing leaders to make sense of it all or at least to connect the dots to suggest the direction that the financial marketing industry is moving.
So, I offer parental-sounding advice for financial marketers: “Be yourself and everything will work out fine.” Financial consumers today want straight talk, and they are not going to be sold any product or service if the promise does not match up to reality. Since firms cannot change what they are in the short run, they must pay attention to the brand promises they are making with great caution. Clients and customers want the real deal.
The first step for your financial brand to be itself is knowing your own financial brand from the inside out. Brands today have to be authentic. “You’ve got to be real,” comments Eileen Sutton, principal at Sutton Creative, a branding firm based in New York. “Financial firms have got to connect with their customers.”
But financial clients and customers have become cynical. They demand the truth without gloss or embellishment. Addressing financial customers in an authentic voice underscores a much needed mutual respect between customer and financial institution.
“Financial services customers are looking for authenticity — the ‘real deal’ from their institutions,” states Bruce Goldberg, CMO of the International Securities Exchange. “We are living in cynical times, and financial clients and customers have every right to be so. They don’t want to be sold. They want to choose, and they want the truth from their institutions in order to make the right choice. I think in general there is a lack of trust and it has to be built.”says Goldberg.
Carrie Sackett’s job as a communications executive with Mercer Human Resource Management focuses on internal audiences. “In this day and age, the brand starts from within and emanates out. Your brand is what you are — not what some consultant wants it to be,” she says.
Sackett knows what she’s talking about. In her past role at Deloitte, LLP, she masterminded an internal communications initiative that engaged thousands of Deloitte employees to create video shorts all on the same subject: “My Deloitte.” Participants then entered films for judging (via Deloitte intranet) by the company at large. The result was the creation of thousands of Deloitte brand ambassadors. More to my point, they discovered their true brand from the inside out.
The financial brands that understand who they are and can extrapolate their identity into their brand communications will be able to make reasonable promises and deliver on them. And I believe this authenticity is what their clients and customers ultimately want in their relationship with their institution.
 
2) Connect with customers as personally as possible.
Eileen Sutton points out that local and regional banks have become the victors in the downturn. “They are using personal and real relationships to underscore essential values that are being conveyed to financial services customers,” she says.
In a research paper titled “Customer Advocacy 2008: How U.S. Consumers Rate Their Banks, Brokerages and Insurers,” Boston-based Forrester Research revealed that “consumers who rate their financial services providers high on ‘customer advocacy’ (the belief that their institutions are true advocates for their behalf) are more likely to consider those firms for additional financial products.”
Bill Doyle, who is a principal analyst at Forrester, spoke to JFAM recently and stated that if customers have bad experiences with their companies, no amount of positive advertising will make up for that. “Customers are smart. They know how you treat them. The best you can do with marketing is to reinforce the truth,” he says. “If you want to change how you are perceived, start by treating customers better, and then use advertising to reinforce the way they’re being treated.”
Connecting with customers is not a concept reserved exclusively for smaller financial institutions and field representatives. However, the larger institutions took their eyes off the ball in better times. Customers have become objectified and, to some degree, taken for granted. Now, as marketers retreat and many larger financial firms are inking new strategies for leaner times, the customer re-enters the picture. While this explanation may sound simplistic, it is. However, the customer has been overlooked.
David Corr, executive vice president and creative director at Publicis (a major global advertising agency handling a number of well-known financial brands), stresses that the job of the creative professional is to build relationships between brands and their consumers. “It’s not about transactions, it’s really about relationships,” he says. “I think in order to have a relationship, you have to be on the same wave length.”
Denise Waggoner, vice president of creative research at Getty Images, emphasizes the importance and value of imagery for building relationships with consumers. “Through our own extensive visual research and analysis, we have identified that ‘Guru Joe’ is essential to the idea of building trust to the ‘guy next door’ that is becoming evident in financial marketing. There is a level of authenticity that comes particularly from portraiture. ‘Guru Joe’ is a real face, a real person who can be an aspiration, but not out of reach,” Waggoner states. Getty Images is a leading digital media company based in Seattle providing still imagery, footage, music and multimedia products to millions of marketing professionals around the world.
Getty’s creative research team recently conducted a study of the financial advertising industry analyzing the state of visual communications and suggests key directions in which it is heading. “Financial Foresight: Opportunity and Visual Communications in Financial Services,” recognizes the forces that are out of the consumer’s control and recommends how they translate on a visual basis. The research is underpinned by analysis of the searches and choices of more than 1.5 million creative professionals on their website, as well as the review of thousands of commercials and other websites.
The time is now for financial marketers to work customer connections back into their strategies. Clients and customers feel trampled and require delicate handling. There is significant opportunity for the financial institutions that care enough to connect meaningfully with their customers. This goes far beyond a meeting or a phone call. It is the approach by which a financial institution communicates with their customers and creates an open door policy that underscores a  confidence in them that “my firm is there for me.”
 
3) Be mindful of verbal and visual tone, respecting what is especially appropriate for the time.
I recently attended a group discussion during which one audience participant asked, “Remember Citi’s ‘Live Richly’ campaign?” The room suddenly erupted into laughter, which came from the fact that one of financial advertising’s most brilliant and successful campaigns is completely inappropriate for the times today. The very idea of a campaign revolving around a promise of “Living Richly” is so far from customer mindsets right now that laughter, presumably at ourselves, was the group’s only response.
Citi’s Mittnacht is aware and highly sensitive of the fact that different messaging is suitable for different times in financial services. “We’re talking about people’s money, people’s lives, and right now we’re talking about it at a time when they are concerned,” he says.
Financial marketers today must be aware that the messaging that might have worked only a few months ago might not work today in financial marketing. On both the business-to-business and consumer sides of financial, people are feeling the pain. “Sensitivity” is a good term to characterize how today’s marketers should carry out their work. What worked three or four years ago will most likely not resonate today with financial audiences. “The biggest issues that I see today are those of content and of character,” says Corr of Publicis. “We can’t be clueless about tone.”
“I have been amazed by how incongruous some of the financial advertising has been, given the current crisis,” says Lewis Goldman, CEO at New Media Consulting, and veteran marketer at Citi. He points to some of the “happy, upbeat messages” that Lehman and others used not long before the collapse. “Some financial service companies do get it,” he says. “Until the dust settles and a clear message for a post-crisis financial world can be developed, Prudential's ‘Rock’ advertising no longer looks out-of-date.”
“The tone of the conversation has to change,” says Mittnacht. “At the same time, there is a healing process and at some point, that turns. The person that is in communications has to be careful that they see the signs of trauma, seriousness and heaviness and that we don’t make that last too long because, at the end of the day, people want to be led out of that trauma. Somebody has to put the swagger back in the advertising and the financial industry and come out and say ‘it’s morning again in America.’ The company that understands when the moment is right and it’s time for that and really gets the tone of the message right (will benefit). It’s almost like trying to time the market. That’s kind of a hard thing to do.”
Waggoner of Getty Images agrees on the importance of tonality in advertising and in striking the right visual tone with financial clients. “Visually, I don’t think we have been in this spot since the days of the post-Enron scandal (combined with 9/11),” says Waggoner. “I think communicators, and those in advertising in particular, have a unique role now to build confidence and trust again. Concepts like ‘humility’ and ‘wisdom’ have started emerging.”
There are parallels in visual communications between today’s financial crisis and the period directly following the World Trade Center terrorist attacks of 2001. Waggoner says she recalls that one of the most significant visual shifts came when advertisers started using black and white photography.
“Black and white brings on a sense of nostalgia and trust, which is reminiscent of a simpler time. Post 9/11, boomers had a craving for nostalgia. This was the big indicator to me that times have changed,” says Waggoner.
“Before 9/11, the term ‘family’ was a term outside of the Top 10 (photos purchased from Getty). Post 9/11, we saw the term ‘family’ move up into the Top 10 — and then visually there was the shift,” she continues. “Visually, we saw the ‘child’ move to the forefront of financial marketing photography. In 2001, marketing photography pointed to Mom and Dad and little Betsy and Jimmy and possibly a dog. In the post 9/11 world, we saw the dog disappear, as focus was on terms such as the child, protection, security and future.”
Waggoner cautions that we are living in sensitive times today. They are not too dissimilar from the times after 9/11.
“Finding the emotional vein that’s appropriate,” is especially important for Mittnacht, he says, adding that true creativity in advertising is very human. “It might not resemble that ‘wacky’ creativity. It might be very human, the authentic voice, and that’s as big a challenge. It’s the difference between writing a humorous or a dramatic novel. It’s all creative art and requires the best of people.”
 
4) Focus on value and deliver it.
The challenge for banks and financial services institutions has always been to deliver real value to their stakeholders. Therefore, the burden of the financial marketer in 2009 is a heavy one. The role of the forward-moving financial marketer is to pull the U.S.’s leading institutions out of this current credit — and credibility — crisis and collectively restore order and some degree of understanding to the world financial markets. Simply, the financial marketer must communicate value.
“The big word that is being used in every meeting that I walk into is ‘value’ and that is probably the most significant thing that (creatives) are trying to offer. “Whether it’s BMW or even Charmin, ‘value’ is the term these days,” says David Corr.
So, how, specifically, do marketers at the world’s leading institutions market their value in a crisis economy? This is something that I am unequipped to recommend beyond suggesting that you, as marketers, ask a critical question of yourself and your team. If the roles were reversed, would you pay for the services of your own financial firm? If not, why not? Now fix the problem. Money is serious business, especially in down times.
“If anything comes out of this,” says Bruce Goldberg, “you need to understand what it is you are doing with money, and it is serious. As organizations, we all have relationships with our customers. They are asking: ‘Do I have a relationship or do I feel misled?’ I think it is going to be difficult but it has to be worked out.”
“In the years ahead, value is what it is all about in financial marketing,” says Eileen Sutton. “Those financial firms that can deliver it will emerge as our next generation of leaders.”
 
Thanks to David Corr, executive vice president, creative director, Publicis; Bill Doyle, senior analyst, Forrester Research; Bruce Goldberg, CMO, The International Securities Exchange; Lewis Goldman, CEO, New Media Consulting; Jon Mittnacht, director of advertising, Citi Wealth Management; Carrie Sackett, principal, Mercer Human Resources Management; Eileen Sutton, principal, Sutton Creative; and Denise Waggoner, vice president for creative research, Getty Images, in sharing thinking in the preparation of this piece.
JFAM extends special gratitude to The Deal, LLC as well as the IABC (New York) in bringing several of these thought leaders together for events moderated by The Journal of Financial Advertising & Marketing. Also, JFAM wishes to thank Getty Images, Inc. for use of photos in this report.
For more information on Forrester Research’s “Customer Advocacy 2008: How U.S. Consumers Rate Their Banks, Brokerages and Insurers,” visit www.forrester.com.

To download a copy of Getty Images’ “Financial Foresight: Opportunity and Visual Communications in Financial Services” research study, a copy is available for free at www.gettyimages.com/smart. Photos used in this report are the copyrighted property of Getty Images, Inc. and may not be used without written permission of Getty Images, Inc.