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The End Of The Story

Remember the Bill Cosby Show (the one where he played Dr. Huxtable)?

There was a scene in that show that I’ve never forgotten. Cosby is talking to his son and tells him: “I brought you into this world — and I can take you out of it.” 

That’s exactly how I feel about this blog. I brought it into this world, and I can take it out of it. And that’s exactly what I’m planning to do.

This Friday will mark two years to the day that I published this blog’s first post. I did so having made a commitment to myself that I would create a great blog — one that would become a Top 10 Marketing blog.

Not that I had any idea what that really meant. I had no idea what Technorati was, no idea if there was a list of top marketing blogs, and actually had no idea what the top marketing blogs were. When I started this blog two years ago, I wasn’t even reading any blogs.

Needless to say, I failed miserably in achieving my goal. 

And thank God for that. Because if I had really wanted this to become a top 10 blog I would had to have written about a lot of things that I don’t really care about writing about. 

And had I done that, I would have failed at achieving what ultimately was the best outcome of writing this blog: Meeting a lot of people I wouldn’t have met otherwise.  (And that’s why, if you’ve ever contemplated whether or not to create your own blog, you should do so. Forget about all this “personal branding” stuff).

But I did live up to my commitment. In two years, I’ve published 360 posts — one every other day. And I can assure you that a helluva lot of time and effort went into creating those posts. In fact, probably too much time and effort.

And I just can’t maintain that level of time, effort, and — most importantly — the required level of mental energy.

So I’ve decided to commit premeditated blogicide. (Premeditated because I’ve thinking about doing this for a couple of months now). I’m killing this blog. 

Just as I made a commitment to writing this blog, I realize that I will need to make a commitment to not writing it. I’m sure that every day there will be things that will happen, or that I will read about, that will make me want to blog about it. And I’m making a commitment to not write about it. 

If it’s worthy enough, I’ll write it as an Aite Group alert note (which, if you’re interested, is available for free even to non-Aite Group clients). But I’m not going to write about here.

End of post.

End of blog.

Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.

Updated Bank Names For 2009

About this time last year, I published a list of updated bank slogans for 2008. This year, I’m moving up to the big time and renaming banks altogether. Here’s a partial list of new bank names we need to see:

 

Old Name                   New Name

NetBank                      NotABank

WaMu                          VaMoose

PFF Bank                     Poof! Bank 

Integrity Bank             DisIntegrated Bank

Hume Bank                 ExHume Bank

Security Pacific Bank   In The Pacific Bank

IndyMac Bank             InDeGround Bank

Downey S&L               Downed S&L

ANB Financial              A Necrophiliac’s Brothel Financial

 

By the way, if you wondering what these banks have in common, go here.

And if you need help understanding the name of the last bank, go here.

Join The Participatory Marketing Network

A new marketing organization has been formed that you should take a look at it. It’s called the Participatory Marketing Network. According to its web site:

Over the last 50 years, we have seen marketing evolve from “Push Marketing” to the “Permission Marketing” concepts popularized by Seth Godin. More recently,  industry experts have proclaimed the coming of a new marketing model “Participatory Marketing,” and while their definitions may differ slightly, their concepts are united in their recognition that:

1. We are in the midst of another paradigm shift that calls for new solutions that recognize and embrace consumer control and empowerment.
2. The Internet and technology have fundamentally changed consumer and brand interactions forever.
3. To succeed and build trust today, marketers must advocate for consumers and make them an active and willing participant in the promotional conversation.”

What I like about this concept is that it: 1) recognizes the need to move beyond push and persmission marketing, and 2) frames the model in a way that isn’t simply limited to social media and social networks.  (On the other hand, I hope the network recognizes that just because marketers must meet the “participatory” challenge, it doesn’t mean that they can stop mastering the permission and push models).

The PMN is the brainchild of Michael Della Penna, who was a pioneer in the email marketing field as one of the co-founders of Bigfoot Interactive, and more recently, was Chief Marketing Officer at database marketing firm Epsilon.

Membership provides access to webinars (the first one from Charlene Li, co-author of the best-selling book Groundswell), white papers, and to proprietary Gen Y research that the network is conducting in conjunction with Pace University’s Interactive and Direct Marketing Lab.

There’s also a blog worth checking out.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Participatory Marketing Network

Rewards Programs’ Bad Rap

I have a request: Would the person who first called a rewards programs a “loyalty” program please raise your hand?

Thank you. Now could you come a little closer…..so I can whack you upside the head for causing so much unneeded debate and confusion.

There is no shortage of academic research addressing the question of whether or not loyalty programs actually create, drive, or lead to customer loyalty. Any number of studies prove both sides of the coin — that these programs do drive loyalty, and that they don’t drive loyalty.

Many of these studies conclude that rewards programs either do or don’t work. What they fail to grasp, however, is that rewards programs, in and of themselves, may not be good or bad. Instead, how any one firm implements a rewards program may be the true determinant of success.

But there’s no shortage of rewards programs skeptics, and their mantra is familiar: “You cannot buy customer loyalty, you must earn it.”

Before we move on, let me say right here and now that no one — and I mean no one — believes that mantra more than I do.

But had our newly-smacked-upside-the-head friend not started substituting the word loyalty for rewards, the marketing world might be a more peaceful place.

You see, I could care less if the studies show that rewards programs lead to loyalty or not. To simply focus on the loyalty criteria misses the point. It’s like saying that batters “fail” if they don’t hit a home run every time they’re at bat (I know — ugh, a sports analogy).

My take: Beyond the question of loyalty, there are a number of strategic benefits that firms that effectively implement rewards programs can reap. Rewards programs are tools for:

• Targeting. Marketers spend a ton of money, time, and effort trying to figure out who to market to. Rewards program participation is like wearing a t-shirt with a bullseye on it. For any given product or service category, rewards program enrollment — and even more importantly, active participation — is often an indication of the emotional involvement a customer has with the product category, and maybe even the firm.

• Engagement. Many firms struggle to find ways to interact with their customers beyond blatant sales pitches that ask them for more business. Just as it is with two people, developing a relationship between a customer and a firm requires some degree of engagement (if you didn’t like the sports analogy, there’s a crude dating analogy that I could make here, but I’ll spare you that pain). Rewards programs are (or I should say, can be) excellent tools to engage customers.

• Selling. Forget whether or not rewards programs drive long-term, lasting loyalty. There’s plenty of evidence that rewards programs can increase sales. At the Loyalty Expo conference that was recently held in Orlando, Luc Bondar and a colleague from Carlson Marketing presented research they conducted that found higher rates of purchase among rewards plan members after they redeem rewards than other rewards program participants.

It’s time to put aside this silly argument of whether or not loyalty programs drive loyalty (and whether or not there are too many programs out there) and focus on the real issue at hand: How to design and implement rewards programs to improve marketing effectiveness and efficiency, and to better engage customers.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Customer Loyalty, Loyalty Programs, Rewards Programs

Banks Are In The Bush League

Who’s got a higher confidence rating, banks or George Bush?

The good news for banks is that the answer is banks. The bad news for banks is that it’s close.

According to the November Rasmussen poll, 35% of the people polled at least somewhat approve of the way the President has handled his job. That’s actually up 2 points from the October survey.

On the other hand, a new study released by market researcher Morpace found that just 38% of consumers are very confident in the banking industry. And that’s down six percentage points from the firm’s September survey

Given the events that unfolded in the past two months, that’s hardly a surprising finding. But what is noteworthy, though, is the decline in consumers’ confidence with their personal banks. According to the article in Marketing Daily:

“Banks have been rolling out messages of reassurance to current and potential customer alike. According to Morpace’s VP of Customer Loyalty Tom Hartley, ‘What the banks [have been] doing is communicating with customer more, through email, ads and other sources, doesn’t seem to be working in restoring their confidence.”

My take: I agree with Tom 100%.

Plenty of smaller institutions — community banks and credit unions in particular — have seen a nice influx of deposits over the past eight or ten weeks. Why? Because of their “safe and sound” messages? No. Because consumers are spreading out their deposits across institutions.

And quite frankly, I don’t think anyone believes any financial institution that touts how secure it is. Not when the CEO of one acquired firm goes on TV talking up his bank’s “bright future.” Or when another bank runs full page ads in major newspapers telling us how safe it is, only for us to find out more recently that is, well, not so financially secure.

So what should banks do?

1) Ignore the industry surveys. The economy is in the tanks, and FIs seem to be failing left and right. Of course the confidence rating of the industry as a whole is going to fall. Big deal. Your bank’s score is what matters — not the industry’s.

2) Stop trying to advertise your way to a higher confidence rating. Banks will build back their confidence ratings as new and existing customers experience a higher level of service. You cannot advertise your way to greatness.

3) Develop (or re-develop) an onboarding program. As new customers come on board, the key to their long term retention will be made or broken in the next 6 to 12 months. It’s critical for banks to recognize the types of relationships these new customers want to have with them. Are they simply spreading their funds across banks for security or are they abandoning old banks and looking for a new primary bank to have a relationship with? Quit wasting money on newspaper and TV ads, and put it into some marketing analytics efforts to figure out how to grow the relationship with the influx of customers who are coming in the door (thanks to no effort on your part).

4) Stay away from TARP money. (Are you listening credit unions?) I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but at some point taking TARP money is going to create PR problems for the institutions that took those funds. 

Technorati Tags: Banking, Marketing

Top 20 Songs On Wall Street For 2008

Swillboard pre-announced its top 20 songs on Wall Street for 2008. I got a sneak preview, so here they are:

20. Grateful Dead, “Loser”
19. Aerosmith, “Dream On”
18. Allman Brothers Band, “Whipping Post”
17. Beatles, “Help!”
16. Animals, “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place”
15. Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive”
14. Patsy Cline, “I Fall To Pieces”
13. Country Joe and The Fish, “The I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag”
12. Dixie Hummingbirds, “I’ll Live Again”
11. The Doors, “The End”
10. Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are a-Changin’”
9. Guitar Slim, “The Things That I Used To Do”
8. Jane’s Addiction, “Been Caught Stealin’”
7. Led Zeppelin, “Dazed and Confused”
6. Barry McGuire, “Eve of Destruction”
5. Joni Mitchell, “Help Me (I Think I’m Falling)”
4. The Surfaris, “Wipe Out”
3. Marion Williams, “Packing Up”
2. The Smiths, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”

And the number one song on Wall Street for 2008:

1. The Temptations, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”

Technorati Tags: Wall Street

Twitter’s Facebook Smackdown

If I HAD A WEB 2.0 COMPANY…

…that had more than its share of technology issues…

…and no clue about what business model would enable it to actually generate revenue…

…and some firm came along offering me $500 million in stock for my company…

I WOULD SELL IT BEFORE THE ACQUIRER CAME TO ITS SENSES.

But faced with the (well, kinda) same set of circumstances, Twitter decided to pass on a $500 million stock offer from Facebook.

Is this a reflection of Twitter’s belief that its worth a lot more than $500 million? Possibly, but I would hope not.

All Things Digital reported:

It’s more about timing,” said one person familiar with Twitter’s motivations. “There is a strong feeling that there is still an opportunity — even with the economic downturn — to blow this thing out.”

One commenter on the site remarked: “In my opinion, the two communities just wouldn’t mesh well.”

Just my opinion, but neither of these views nails the real issue (Facebook can hardly be considered a single community, and the overlap between Facebook and Twitter users is huge, so the commenter is really off-base).

My take: Twitter’s rejection reflects its take on Facebook’s future valuation.

I said this during the dot-com boom eight years ago, and it holds true today: For all these (now Web 2.0) firms to succeed and thrive, advertising is going to have to account for a greater portion of GNP than healthcare and financial services — combined.

And that’s simply not going to happen.

It doesn’t add up. On one hand, to garner a multi-billion dollar valuation, a Web 2.0 firm needs to have mass appeal. But on the other hand, the pundits yell that “mass media advertising is dead!” If shoving advertisements in the face of people on TV, in magazines, and on other Web sites doesn’t work, then why would it work on Facebook?

 Even Google is diversifying its revenue stream, and has seen its licensing revenue (which admittedly only accounts for about 3% of revenue) grow by 2.5 times its 2007 level through just the first three quarters of 2008.

Twitter is making a smart move by passing on this deal. Not because it’s worth more than $500 million today, but because that $500 million might not be worth as much in the future with Facebook as it would be with some other firm.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Facebook

Three Things Banks Need To Do To Improve Their Reputation With Consumers

While there are a lot of things that banks need to do to get back on track profitability-wise, there are three “things” banks need to improve in order to (re-?)gain their credibility with consumers:

• Transparency. If the CEO of your company goes on TV (say, Jim Cramer’s show) and tells the world the future of your firm looks bright, and then two days later, other banks are picking at you like vultures on roadkill, then your firm is not transparent. Consumers (not to mention investors) are sick and tired of this crap. Come clean about your financial situation. And come clean about your product quality. And your fees. Be transparent. We know the difference.

• Tangibility. The Financial Brand blog recently highlighted the branding efforts of one bank, who’s running a series of ads showing someone (as Jeffry Pilcher writes) “wrestling — literally — with some aspect of their financial life: a wallet, purse, or checkbook. The only blurb of copy — the headline — says ‘Take control of your finances.” Pardon my french, but what the hell does that mean? Exactly what, Mr. or Ms. Banker, are you proposing to DO to actually help us “take control”? Aspirational messages are nice, but at some point (uh, sooner rather than later), banks need to be a lot more tangible about delivering on this stuff.

• Competency. Pretty soon, I’m going to get a call from my account manager at my bank, asking me to talk with an adviser from the investment firm that they recently acquired. (This could be any number of banks). My response is going to be “you want me to talk to an adviser from a firm that did such a *great* job managing its own money that it nearly went out of business before you guys scooped them up for 10% of the value they were worth a year earlier?” (This could be any number of investment firms). A bank branch rep I spoke to recently couldn’t even answer basic questions about the changes in FDIC coverage. My point: To improve their reputations, banks (and other FIs) are going to have to re-prove their basic competency regarding financial matters.

The reason I refer to these things as “things” is that I don’t know what else to call them. Measures? Perceptions?

Problem is, I don’t think any bank tracks these “things” today, so how will they really know if they’re improving on them?

Maybe the brand index methodologies out there will tell them. Not likely.

Fixing these “things” isn’t going to come from external measurement. It will happen because the management team will take control of the situation, make fixing their reputation a priority, and do something about it.

Technorati Tags: Banking, Marketing, The Financial Brand

Off-Topic: Top 10 Bands Of The Election Season

The results from Swillboard are in, and I’m pleased to present the top 10 bands (or musicians) from this election season:

10. The Clash
9. The Obamas and The Papas
8. Dire Straits
7. Bad Company
6. John McColtrane
5. Negativland
4. Barack Sabbath
3. New Order
2. Rage Against The McCain

And the number one band of the election season……

1. Blind Faith

The top songs, in case you were wondering, were Jimi Hendrix’ “Hey Joe (Biden)” and Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Palin.”

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain