Entertain or Die. The Fintech Edit.

Is fintech still the creative, innovative, customer-obsessed space it set out to be? Our brands may be falling short.

Yesterday, I downloaded the Entertain or Die report from Small World , a London-based creative consultancy. You can download the report here. It's insightful, fun, full of useful examples to examine how brands use ‘entertainment’ as a means of earning share of voice and the right to grow. And whilst it’s fascinating to see how Thursday competes against Bumble or Duolingo against Babbel, I thought it could be interesting to apply the thinking to the fintech space.

For context, Small World identified eight Entertainer personas or approaches to brand building. These include:

1. ?Scriptwriters who treat the marketing war room like the writers room on a long-standing TV show.?
2. Celebrity CEOs who use the huge klout of their founder/leaders to bolster their reach and brand engagement.
3. Collaborative Charmleons who make their brand relevant through unexpected and creative partnerships (as well as some iconic brand assets).
4. Whiplashers who trade in awe and amazement, using design to turn heads and stand out.
5. Purpose Punks who punch through the slacktivist haze of hashtags and inspire real activism.
6. People’s Play-Dohs who adopt a philosophy rather than a tactic to stay malleable, durable and community-focused.?
7. Newsjackers who hack the media agenda and jump on memes to snatch headlines and grow social followings through a comedic spirit.?
8. Hype Machines who make their own noise through stunts, product drops, cultivated communities and spread through word-of-mouth.?

I started wondering: Who are the Scriptwriter brands of fintech? The Whiplashers that make the space and their audience doubletake? Who can claim the most Celebrity CEO or has cut through by being a Purpose Punk?

Looking at the biggest names in fintech, we could easily go through all eight tactics – talk about how Monzo is Whiplasher royalty, why Klarna takes the Celebrity CEO crown, or how Revolut pips others to the post when it comes to being a Hype Machine.

Let's pull out just a few in more detail.

The Scriptwriter

It has to be Cleo - fuelled by internet culture and totally embedded in our online-offline lifestyles, Cleo’s approach turns their AI assistant into a character, transforms their language, visual identity, and key themes into a whole immersive world. One that’s relatable, funny, witty, and culturally relevant. No notes here.

The Newsjacker

This shout out also has to go to Yonder for being the one fintech that my friends have recommended to me before I could get there. So many of them shared the brand's 'unofficial sponsorship' of the Wimbledon Queue alongside multiple cry-laughing emojis. I'm pretty sure this puts them on par with @Revolut for genuinely effective Newsjacker tactics - and that's no mean feat.

The Collaborative Charmeleon

Consider Dojo with their ability to ‘transform [as a brand] by shrouding itself in its environment [ie. neighbourhood businesses]’. Their hyper-local earned media approach is an impressive example of this - regularly spotlighting the businesses they support rather than just themselves. Similarly, their logo is on all of the silicon covers they make for card machines, but their customers can choose the cover colour that fits their business, ensuring there's physical brand availability blended into the very thing that makes them relevant: small local businesses. You just wonder how far they could push that collaborative creativity - whether they could do something truly unexpected to further rock a category where everyone looks and feels the same.

The Purpose Punks

If we were to ask ‘who wants to punch purpose-fatigue in the jaw?’ in fintech, I’d point to brands like Starling Bank and Wise . Purpose alone was never going to be enough to stand out for brands like these – but combined with personality they’ve become forces to reckon with. From the ‘transparency marches’ that launched (Transfer)Wise into the mainstream media to the #MakeMoneyEqual campaign that remains a key part of Starling’s platform, they’ve borrowed behaviours from activists, combined it with creative design, provided product-led solutions, added a hefty pinch of humour, and positioned themselves on the side of people.

But behaviours that were once bold and exciting are increasingly category generics.

The standout fintech companies of the last decade have been eye-popping, attention-stealing, rabble-rousing, troublemaking, rule-breaking, risk-taking, buzzworthy, hype monsters. They had to be to compete. Hot coral, digiteal, premium metal – I don’t need to name them because these creative decisions have made their mark. Like Small World's Entertainers, they combined 'creativity, innovation and entertainment' to create a winning playbook that stole attention, share of voice, and customers.

Except take the Newsjacker. Everyone tries to do it. Yet, in many cases, an always-on approach feels more like algorithm fodder than a provocateur's punchline. Similarly, just because you have a neon asset (logo, card, card machine, t-shirt, waterbottle, app), doesn't make you a Whiplasher. Bright colours, snazzy packaging, vertical designs, icons and illustrations - they were new ten years ago. Now they're the standard.

Newcomers (and incumbents playing catch-up) have a challenge. Right now, many are replicating creativity, mimicking design, using the same channels (minus Vine, RIP) as we were in 2015. Even the language is generically 'simple', 'fair', 'smart as your phone'.

It's not innovation. It's not subversion. It's not entertainment. It simply blends in. And that's death to a brand.

So what can be done? If only it were as easy as banning the word 'simplicity' from brand books, right?

Perhaps the place to start is looking at other sectors the way we used to. Historically, brands have aspired to be the Apple, the Amazon, the Freebirds, the Spotify of money. Now you hear of companies trying to be the next Monzo or bigger than Revolut or Klarna for insurance. Why not look to Duolingo, Thursday, Liquid Death, #Merky? What might we learn from great work outside our own echo chamber? How could it change our craft?

Another consideration: be brave. Yes, some companies have run into trouble for being almost 'too entertaining'. And sure, we live in times where ‘finance’ and ‘entertainment’ may not seem natural bedfellows (see: cost of living, geopolitical unrest, climate change, Trump v Biden 2.0). But to earn a share of voice means not sounding like everyone else. To grow requires taking risks. So stop talking about your 'super simple' product. Stop putting out research like 'embedded finance company reveals survey showing embedded finance is good'. And start doing what's unexpected. Push boundaries. Bring excellence to the party.

The creativity of our sector cannot fizzle out - we need it more than ever. If we don’t want the momentum to sputter and slow, fintech needs to nurture that spark, that humour, that soul. We need to keep investing in the work that makes our products sing, who live and breathe our customers - that's our creatives, our brand aficionados, the strategy nerds, the masters of new media.?

Fintech has so much work left to do, our brands so much further to go. In a world with limited attention and a glut of competition, it’s time to entertain, innovate, create, or die. ??

Read the original report here: