InMarketing This Week: What's in a name?

Why what you call your company is inconsequential and what to focus on instead.

Written for CEOs, marketers and other leaders in the financial sector,?InMarketing This Week?is a showcase for news likely to impact them - delivered with insight on why it matters and ideas on what to do about it.

It’s published?here?every Sunday to give you a head start on the week.?Subscribe?to?have it delivered straight to your inbox at six, before it's available anywhere else.

This week

?????Read on?to learn why:

①?Your name is not?your brand.

②?Purpose, trust and integrity?should be your focus.

③?The payments space?will be hotly contested for years.

④?Fintech firms?increasingly rely on content to differentiate.

⑤?People are loyal to communities, not brands.

⑥?Mark Zuckerberg?has no principles.

⑦?Revolut is the most popular?bank in the world.

What's new?

Hot on the heels of scandals and government inquiries too frequent to count comes the news that Facebook might change its name as early as next week. The Economist reports how?this reflects ambition—and weakness.

In short:

• “The likely official reason for the rebranding, which Facebook has not confirmed, is that the firm has outgrown the social network that Mark Zuckerberg started 17 years ago in a Harvard dorm. Today it encompasses other social apps (Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger) and video hardware (Oculus, Portal). It has launched a digital wallet (Novi) and may yet offer a currency (Diem). Mr Zuckerberg expects people eventually to associate his firm more with the ‘metaverse’, a virtual space for work, play and more, than with social media.”
• “There is another, less flattering possible motive for a makeover. For all its pecuniary success, the Facebook brand has become tarnished. The social network is blamed for stoking everything from teenage anorexia to insurrection at the?US?Capitol.”
• “Normally, a brand facing a reputational crisis might dump its unpopular CEO. But Mr Zuckerberg’s position is unassailable, which may explain why he would want to dump the brand instead.”

Why does it matter?

Plenty of strategy pundits have already waded in on whether this move will work for Facebook. For what it’s worth, I think there is value in it for Zuckerberg. It more clearly positions the organisation as a conglomerate, with ambitions beyond social media. More importantly perhaps, by distancing himself from the app, Zuckerberg will put a much needed buffer between himself and the worst transgressions of his group. It also creates a more motivational hierarchy, with the heads of each business now being able to aspire to a ‘CEO’ title. But you’re reading?InMarketing?after all so what does the move mean from a marketing perspective?

① One thing that’s often overlooked is that your name is not your brand. Thus, a name change is not a rebrand. Your brand is the promise you make to your customers about what it’s like to deal with you. Branding comes from much more than your company name or logo. It’s linked to purpose, mission, and culture.

So what really needs to change at Facebook - and any company with a reputational crisis - is all of those things. If Apple’s meteoric success teaches us anything about branding it is that there really isn’t much in a name. It’s all about the experience, the promise, the trust. A name is an empty vessel that you imbue with your brand.

What's next?

Take action

② I can’t imagine you’re facing reputational challenges of Facebook’s ilk but I’m sure you care about how your brand it perceived. Think about:

1. Purpose:?Identify why you exist as an organisation beyond shareholder value. What problem are you here to tackle? Why do you all get up in the morning and get to work? This is the foundation of your brand.
2. Trust:?You have to earn your clients’ trust, day after day, interaction after interaction. Clarity of purpose backed up by consistency. Ensure that every time a client comes into contact with your brand - whether it be reading a tweet, visiting your office or reading their client reports - the experience, the way it makes them feel, is the same.
3. Integrity:?Purpose and trust need to be bolstered by integrity. Do the right thing, even when you know no one is watching.

Focus on these three things and your good name will take care of itself.

Get help

I’m looking for a full-time, in-house role?but in the post-Covid age of depleted marketing budgets and remote teams with skills gaps, many organisations need marketing and communications support that’s agile, flexible, and risk free. That’s why I founded?WhatsNext Partners.

Whether it be as a permanent member of your team or with on demand support, just hit ‘reply’ to let me know if you need my help.

Share

Can I ask you a favour??If you found this post useful?or know someone who would, please like, comment on, or - best of all - share it with your professional network. It really helps me to grow the readership.

What else?

Three other articles?that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

The race to redefine cross-border finance

③?The payments space looks to be hotly contested?in years ahead.

• “More than $140trn has been transmitted across borders in the past year, equivalent to 152% of global GDP. Analysts reckon about 90% of that went through SWIFT. Its 11,000 members in 200 countries ping each other 42m times a day.”
• “Fintechs, banks and governments are vying to rival the network. SWIFT, for its part, is fighting back. On October 14th it said 100 banks had signed up to SWIFT Go, its high-speed transfer service.”
• “Fintechs so far play a minuscule role in cross-border payments. The bigger threats to?SWIFT?come from bigger beasts.?Credit-card giants are building the infrastructure to process retail ‘push’ payments (those initiated by the sender, rather than the receiver, as is usually the case with credit cards) that will run largely parallel to?SWIFT.”

TECHNOLOGY

PayPal in $45bn bid for Pinterest

④?Fintech firms will increasingly rely on content?to differentiate themselves.

• “PayPal has offered to buy digital pinboard site Pinterest for $45 billion, a combination that could herald more financial technology and social media tie-ups in e-commerce.”
• “The deal talks come as internet shoppers increasingly buy items they see on social media, often following ‘influencers’ on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. Acquiring Pinterest would allow PayPal to capture more of that e-commerce growth and diversify its income though advertising revenue.”
• “Social media platforms that have not pursued mergers with fintech firms have been working on ways to allow consumers to buy directly from their platforms.”

Related: Marketing professor Scott Galloway predicted this week that this is just the beginning. He sees?Square buying Twitter and Shopify buying Snapchat.

MEDIA & MARKETING

Build a community, not an audience

⑤?People are loyal to communities, not brands.

At the latest?Newsrewired conference, speakers shared tips on building communities:

• “Focus on relationships, not scale.”
• “Measure engagement (frequency of visits, amount of time spent on the site per visit, and the level of interaction), not page views.”
• “Create a persona to allow your team to be consistent with their voice, branding and marketing.”

Well said

⑥?Walt Mossberg?talking to Kara Swisher on?her Sway podcast:

“I think [Facebook] is fundamentally unethical. In my encounters with Mark Zuckerberg, I’ve never been able to discover any principles.”

One more thing...

⑦ BusinessFinancing.co.uk analysed Google search data to reveal?the world’s most popular (or at least most-searched) digital banks.

Off cuts

The stories that?almost?made this week’s newsletter.

MONDAY

???Fintech firm N26 now worth more than Commerzbank

???????Monese appoints Revolut and JP Morgan veterans

?????????GoHenry launches new financial literacy tool for children

TUESDAY

?????European fintech funding booming but could be set to stall

??TikTok set to become top social medium in 2022?as?the FCA joins

???Grayscale to turn the world’s biggest bitcoin fund into an ETF

WEDNESDAY

???How does JP Morgan’s Chase app stack up?

???LSE becomes first bourse to issue SSE-based climate guidancewhile?about half of investors globally say lack of robust data biggest barrier to ESG adoption

????♀??Why empathy matters more than ever in B2B content marketing

THURSDAY

???Why CMOs need to rebrand as chief market officers

???PensionBee reaches 100k invested customer milestone as marketing push pays dividends

???Why brands should treat marketing strategies like investment portfolios

FRIDAY

???Revue now lets you subscribe to newsletters directly on your Twitter timeline

???????Internal marketing – not just external – key to weathering the ‘great resignation’

??Revolut acquires New York talent sourcing marketplace

SATURDAY

???The meaning of mission statements

About

Written for CEOs, marketers and other leaders in the financial sector,?InMarketing This Week?is a showcase for news likely to impact them - delivered with insight on why it matters and ideas on what to do about it. It’s published every Sunday evening to give you a head start on the week. Read it?here, or?subscribe?to?have it delivered straight to your inbox at six, before it's available anywhere else.

InMarketing?is a broader celebration of marketing that innovates, interacts and influences. It's available?on Twitter?and?on LinkedIn.