Edition 45 - Market like you mean it.

Hey folks, ????

It’s Wednesday again and that means another deep dive into something that’s rolling around in my brain when it comes to business. If you’re newly subscribed then welcome to the party and thanks for joining! If you’ve been here a while then welcome back.?

This week I’d like to put the spotlight on branding. Big incumbent bank branding whose inspiring straplines and marketing advertisements usually set out to instil trust and confidence in their customers, when all the while hammering out punitive charges left right and centre behind their backs.?

This misalignment is terrifying and it’s increasingly damaging the reputation of these once humble and helpful institutions.?

Let’s double click. ????

Once upon a time there was a village banker.?

A long time ago businesses set up shop in towns in order to support the local community with their everyday needs. The internet wasn’t a thing, so word of mouth was critical to forging a solid community belief. The success of that business therefore was predicated on people’s experience, and the casual conversations in the pub or the post office spread the word and promoted footfall.?

When a business gained enough success naturally it got to operate in more towns, more cities, internationally and eventually globally.?

But something changed along the way.?

Through the advent of media those original experience stories no longer became the leading indicator to the service that business was providing, and instead we saw the birth of the importance of brand awareness.

Dialogue to monologue to dialogue.?

With TV and radio crashing onto the scene any old brand, if they had enough money, could paint themselves in whatever guise they wanted to be. Enough money in above the line marketing was the spend choice especially for those who either didn’t know what to change or worse, how to change it in their back offices.

In the case of banking, you had a customer perspective who was being sold into a vision via plinky plonky music and disingenuous hero narratives, dreamed up by itchy and scratchy or whoever marketing company chosen, only to be greeted by letters in the post for increasing fees.?

For the banks themselves, the reality of what they are doing is exposed via a sizeable complaints department and tele-clerk services who attempt to explain the T&Cs that were not aforementioned when chasing the dream state.?

What we’ve found in recent years is this narrative coming full circle where social platforms have given customers back a voice, and with people engaging in conversations openly with thousands more people worldwide 24/7, then customer opinion matters once again and they are brutally and honestly being shared online.?

Businesses, not just banks, still see these circles as concentric. They operate in a way that designs a service for the customer and not with the customer.?

We’ve gone from a world where physical humans would speak to physical humans on the ground to get a sense of the type of experience they were getting or looking for, to spending a tonne of money bringing to life (through clever marketing) a stereotypical version of a good experience.

Marketing talks at the customer to entice them in which makes sense only if the brand has follow through in their promises. Overdraft fees, lending fees, credit card bills are all behind the scenes to banks who have a brand that is meant to be ‘for the customer.’

Now we’re in a world where what worked in the beginning and made businesses successful is coming back to the forefront while keeping up with the complex needs of customers.?

Social media has arguably seen the customers themselves force this change by wanting to be heard after so long of being the silent party. But alongside this we have methodologies like Jobs to be Done where operationally, bringing back that 121 dialogue allows companies to get under the skin of their customer base and really design propositions that have longevity.

Do what you say you’ll do.

If at this point you think I’m being naive, I’m not… wait is that what I would say if I was being naive?!

Sure marketing is a hugely important part of having a successful brand and attracting customers, but the difference here is trust.?

You simply cannot have any difference between what your external brand is saying and what the business is doing day to day. Nowadays the impact of delivering a bad surface is just not acceptable when you have other brands out there killing it because they deliver on what their brand stands for.?

This goes for personal branding also. I see a lot of people taking credibility from talking rather than doing the doing.?

If you are providing a service to a community you should market what you do and not what you what to be, because at the end of the day it’s your community that’s going to carry your message to other people if you do it well, as well as use your product.

Let me try another metaphor. If someone told you that they were going to change their lifestyle and become a healthier person and lose some weight but then told you that they did this by having a hair cut would would you say? While technically they would be a few miligrams lighter then overall they would have rebranded themselves rather than actually changing anything.?

Now imagine a new hair cut cost you 10 million pounds.???

I’ll get off my high horse now.?

See you next week. ????

D

While you're here a quick note to ask for your support. A friend of mine has a little 2 year old daughter, Bethany who has sadly been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I can't begin to understand what they must be going through, but they're raising money to help them and others going through similar things. If I've ever helped you, then help them! Thank you -?https://gofund.me/05b5bacd