Teamspirit

Will 2012 be the year of mobile?

2012-01-06T09:47:00.001Z

It's amusing to think that for a decade you'd consistently see the question 'Is next year the year of mobile?' pop up in every end of every year digital round up. Amusing mainly because we're quite definitely through that time and mobile should now be central to all brand's plans. With the penetration of smartphones now beyond 33% in the UK and rising fast putting mobile first is not desirable, it's essential.

So we thought we'd outline the 5 things we believe will be central to thinking next year.

1. Less reliance on apps and more investment in mobile web. The diversity of smartphone device types means that building apps will start to become an expensive and far less scalable solution than building a high quality mobile web solution and we will start to see serious investment in holistic mobile web development.

2. Development of APIs as a central tenet of mobile strategy - data as a centralised resource will become the oil in the company's mobile strategy, by developing centralised APIs companies will cut out the costs associated with developing multiple apps per business unit and work off a centralised data resource.

3. Dedicated mobile web development for campaigns. Too many mobile campaigns are pointing to landing pages optimised for a PC experience. 2012 will see the power of HTML5 harnessed to deliver true mobile advertising innovation.

4. Geo-location as an embedded function – as social media is transformed by the use through mobile devices understanding how to use location to build campaigning strategies will be essential. That could be through companies well versed in geo-fencing for campaigns such as O2 with its More product or by analysis of brand mentions by geo-location so that a more flexible less campaign based approach can be taken.

5. The explosion of contactless payments through smartphones – as manufacturers start to build smartphones with Near Field Communication (NFC) chips as standard, wallet functionality will start to be adopted quickly by consumers. The Olympics will be the contactless game s and this will lead to increased adoption.

Teamspirit Group appoints Group Digital Director

2011-01-11T13:53:00.002Z

Chime owned-Teamspirit Group, the specialist integrated financial services agency, has appointed David Jones as Group Digital Director. He will be responsible for growing digital consultancy across the Group’s business including advertising and communications, public relations and professional services businesses.

Jones is a veteran of the digital marketing and communications sector and brings with him a wealth of experience from cross-platform working. Previous experience includes 3 Monkeys, Lulu.com and Conde Nast as well as founding Galileo Digital Marketing in 2008. He will join the board of Teamspirit.

Commenting on the hire, CEO of Teamspirit Group, Jo Parker, said: "Digital work already generates 28% of the agency’s revenue and we have been doing exciting work for clients from social media through to developing digital news channels. But with increasing demand for us to be the guardian of content in all forms of media for our clients, this is an important hire for us. David has fantastic experience which spans digital agency, public relations and publishing, which will help us to develop new exciting propositions that work across all media."

David Jones commented: “I am delighted to join Teamspirit, a genuinely integrated business. As content continues to be King in 2011, I am excited about working with our clients and being part of a full service offering (hosted all under one roof) which is rare in this industry.”

Teamspirit is part of Chime Communications Plc. In 2009, Chime filed record full-year results with a 14% rise in profits. Enjoying similar results, Teamspirit experienced a 17% growth last year making the agency 66 strong. The fully integrated agency offers services which include digital, project management, online marketing, brand and public relations.

To find out more about the agency please call 020 7360 7878.

Eeny, meany, miny, mo...

2010-10-15T11:52:00.012+01:00

Choosing digital channels has become increasingly complex in the past few years, with so many platforms to operate from and limited budget and resource brands are spending a huge amount of time calculating where best to reside. Earlier this week Brian Solis released Version 3 of the conversation prism which further underlines the sudden explosion of potential channels you as a brand could be using.

For those new to the market, undoubtedly the choice (whether correct or not) has been, whether to plump for Facebook or Twitter and this week two sets of figures emerged. The first from Visible Banking unveiled the most popular banks by Facebook fans, revealing that in the UK Barclays and RBS were out front by a long way. Interestingly while their Facebook presence is solid, their Twitter activity is far less co-ordinated. Around the same time it was revealed that in the US 45% of asset management companies had a social media presence, but it is evidenced that there is more engagement activity through Twitter and less so on Facebook.

So what? Well a couple of interesting pieces emerged this week that pointed to the future value of Twitter versus Facebook as a sales channel. Forrester research suggested that Twitter followers had a 37% propensity to purchase from the brands they followed as opposed to 21% on Facebook. This is a stark difference, but given the comparable numbers of users Facebook is still going to win out on sheer volume alone, in terms of its ability to drive leads. All of this has to be contextualied however, following a statement from Twitter's departing CEO, Ev Williams who stated, that the Twitter user base has the potential to reach 1 billion users. That number puts a different veneer on the scale of opportunity for brands.

Frankly, at the bottom of this social mountain we have begun to climb the message has to be - keep testing. See what works, invest more in that area and then keep on testing. There's nothing to say that either of these platforms will even be recognisable in 5 years time so there's little point in watching and waiting it’d be better to get involved and see where it takes you.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

ASB New Zealand opens first Facebook bank branch in the world

2010-10-07T09:44:00.012+01:00

Three weeks ago ASB in New Zealand opened the doors (or whatever you term the online equivalent, launched I guess) to Facebook's first online bank branch. We blogged some months back about the potential for Facebook to become a major player in banking services and what ASB have done is recognise that potential and faced it head on, moving their services on to the social network. It's a brave move but one that was inevitable.

Last week we tried the branch out. It's a very simple service. At its heart it's an online chat interface built directly into Facebook. There are a selection of advisers to choose to talk to, all of whom are named and photographed individuals, to increase the person to person appeal that is the hallmark of social networking and you are able to choose from those available to chat.

We spoke to Elysse to find out how the launch was going? She was friendly, personable and very knowledgable and stated there had been considerable interest in the service. Although ASB are at present unable to offer services to those overseas, she said they had had considerable contact from New Zealand travellers who were able to sort out their issues quickly and easily through Facebook.

We went on to have a brief Twitter chat with Anna Curzon the General Manager, Internet Banking for ASB who confirmed the interest

That second statement really underlines the point of introducing this branch concept in to Facebook. In a time impoverished and globalised environment brands need to be in the places their customers are. Financial services brands are definitely behind the curve in following that trend, but ASB has made a huge step forward.

While the services through the ASB Facebook branch are currently limited the mere fact that they are there speaks volumes for their foresight and ambition. This is a bold first move and we’re sure it will be the first of many. We will keep an eye on whether ASB benefits from first mover advantage.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

Geo-location is where it's at, but should financial services brands check-in?

2010-09-11T15:23:00.006+01:00

An interesting video was uploaded by a French developer this week. In a few hours he'd developed a product called Track Dropper. This allowed users to leave musical 'treasure' for passers-by in specific locations. Do what? In simple terms you choose a music track from your mobile device and attach it to your location. Users who then pass that place in the future and are using the same software would be able to pick that track up, upload it to their mobile device and listen. Why's that of any use? Well it could be used by brands that have music as a core element of their strategy. So for O2, at the O2, or maybe for Diesel in their retail outlets, this could provide fantastic brand value.

Geo-location has been the building story of 2010. Since SXSW in March this year the fight has been on to win the geo-location battle. The main protagonists so far have been first Foursquare who has successfully built 2 million followers by tapping into the enthusiasm for gameplay. Users who 'check-in' are awarded points and badges while sharing their location with their friends. Second there's Gowalla who allow users to attach pictures and videos to locations for other users to pick up when they next check-in. Then on the horizon is the big beast Facebook with its Places product, with 100 million users updating on their mobiles, the opportunity for Places is absolutely monumental as people start to share their location on a huge scale.

But what are the implications for Financial Services brands. There's been plenty of chatter about location-based services, but that doesn't mean brands should really be worrying too much at the moment. There's a place for experimenting with some accounts as an individual, and/or setting up profiles for your organisation's locations, all these new services should be tested out to identify utility. But there's no pressing need to plough into it right now. There are some applications that we feel could work well for the insurance or mortgage lending space, but at present the services need to mature, add addtional richer layers of content and users need to start getting involved more deeply before location will have real impact. Already new services like SCVNGR are beginning to show what the future could be, with both gaming and content elements wrapped into the same application, and by linking with Facebook Places they are already gaining enormous amounts of followers. We'll be watching the space with interest as it expands.

FSA social media review reveals misunderstanding of the medium

2010-06-24T23:43:00.005+01:00

Last week the FSA produced a paper on the use of social media by Financial Services companies. The paper was an analysis of 30 Facebook and Twitter accounts held by different organisations - both big and small - across the sector.

The FSA stated that when financial services firms do ‘make use of new media as a platform for advertising they must make sure that the information stays accurate and relevant’ and does not go beyond ‘image advertising’. It was also keen to point out that the guidance around promotion of product applied in new media in the same way they do to other mediums.

However, reading the contents of the report is a little worrying. The paper has the feeling of a holding position for the FSA, while they get closer to and start to understand the medium and how best to approach its regulation.

The focus on Twitter and Facebook is the first alarm bell. Considering the wealth of sites out there that can be considered social the task of assessment is going to be enormous. The second was the use of the word advertising. This suggests a misunderstanding of the social web as a conversational medium. The third and somewhat more worrying alarm bell was a statement that appeared on Outlaw.com. OUT-LAW asked the FSA 'if promotions on Twitter that provide a link to further details are likely to fall foul of its rules on stand-alone compliance. An FSA spokeswoman said 'the FSA would not be prescriptive on that point''.

There are similar vague responses to the specifics of how regulation would apply in the medium. Overall there is an overarching feeling that Providers and IFAs are going to be left to interpret the regulations themselves. In an industry that has such stringent compliance procedures this position could very effectively dampen the growth of use of the medium for all but the most confident of companies. In a context where no regulation has been specified firms could take the view that it's simply too risky to enter the arena, or moreover social presences will become stiff broadcast mediums entirely unsuited to the new conversational online world.

The FSA needs to quickly get up to speed on this issue and offer much more specific guidance. This doesn't need to be a huge tome, in fact I'd suggest anything but, but it does need to provide examples of good and bad practice.

Maybe radically it could convene a loose working group that could help shape its approach to regulation in the medium. I know Teamspirit would certainly be keen to get involved in that. So how about it FSA? I'm having to ask you here because I couldn't find you on Twitter.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

Is sharing purchasing behaviour a step too far?

2010-06-14T08:43:00.002+01:00

A new invitation only Beta was launched last week for Swipely. From the introductory video it looks strikingly similar to Blippy. Both services are essentially set up to track our purchasing behaviour. As a user, you choose the vendors you wish to add to your profile - mostly online currently, think Amazon, EBay and iTunes - then each time you make a credit card purchase that information can be shared online with friends, selected associates or with the entire world if you wish.

Along with location based applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla these online services are the latest attracting ‘why would you want to share that information?’ type attention, just as Facebook and Twitter have in the past. However, arguably, sharing purchase information or location information is more valuable to your friends and followers than updating your Twitter or Facebook profiles.

Let’s face it, you’re either a person who shares or you’re not. Even if you’re a person that shares, it doesn’t mean you have to share everything and all these services allow you to select what you choose to share, or not. The point with Blippy and Swipely is that by sharing your purchasing behaviour you potentially reveal far more about who you are and what your preferences are, than if you share your thoughts on Twitter and Facebook. So, if you’re interested in building a personal brand, as a opposed to a public image, these services start to become essential.

From a business perspective, this type of purchasing information becomes invaluable. For years now the large food retailers have built huge levels of data about their customers’ buying habits, and with it they’ve built strong relationship-led businesses. Services such as Blippy and Swipely potentially offer the same level of personalisation to financial services companies. Certainly credit card companies will be hugely interested. However the opportunities for personal finance products are potentially huge and who knows, as the services mature more structured products could start to become contenders.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

RDR: Simplified Advice

2010-06-07T17:31:00.006+01:00

With a mooted 30 million UK adults beyond the scope of full advice (consumers with less than £257 a month to save can’t be economically served by full advice) and only 18 months to go until final RDR implementation the industry got together to ask “ where on earth are we?”. After a spot of good old show and tell from the ABI, KPMG, the FSA and several providers, here’s the consensus…

RDR: Simplified Advice - May 2010

View more presentations from Teamspirit.

The price of politics on Financial Services

2010-05-07T15:39:00.003+01:00

Download now or preview on posterous

The politics of Financial Services doc.pdf (209 KB)

While we’re in the grips of a hung parliament and the shape of the future government is still to be defined we thought it would be good to look at the policies of the three parties. In particular how they’ll affect the economy and the financial services industry in particular.

Here’s a quick overview of the likely changes that the three main parties will attempt to bring in over the next parliament so long as any one party has a clear majority.

David McCann

Planning Director

Posted via email from teamspirit's posterous

The North Sea Bubble?

2010-04-26T09:18:00.002+01:00

Interesting report from Mark Easton last week on political parties views on property prices. No surprises that every single one of them sits on the fence, but all financial brands need to be thinking about this given the long shadow that home ownership casts.

The Thatcherite Revolution did many things but perhaps the biggest was creating the Cult of Property. Unlike many of our neighbours, Britons believe that owning bricks and mortar is an inalienable right and will do almost anything to achieve this. Including, as is clear with mortgage fraud cases and repossessions soaring, lying and borrowing way beyond what is sensible. Of course with rents still high and public housing stock pitiful this isn’t going to change any time soon. But surely every financial business has a real interest in educating their customers as to how and why they need to control their finances?

Organisations like the IFS School of Finance are attempting to do this, but until all companies that offer credit of any time take the issue seriously they are only scratching the surface.

Jim Poulter
Client Services Director

First Direct Live- 6 months on

2010-04-26T04:16:00.004+01:00

It is coming up to 6 months since First Direct launched First Direct Live. The site has been hailed as a triumph of the open and honest sharing of customer feedback in real time. First Direct is still really the only UK retail bank that has successfully engaged with its customers online. However, in reality the online experience isn’t ‘amazing’. The persistence in using white out of black in the design is still an accessibility minefield, however because it looks different it has been allowed to pass and while the First Direct 'Retail Experience' is so much better than other competitors it tends to be regarded as highly successful. However, if you place the offering next to some other large consumer brands it doesn’t stack up as successfully.

Now this is not to say that First Direct is not a decent experience, but it could be better and it is against this backdrop that the questions around First Direct Live come. There has been little critical evaluation of the site. It does seem to have snuck under the radar with little scrutiny, so 6 months on from launch there are 5 areas in which we feel the site could definitely be improved as a true reflection of customer sentiment.

1. Ratings - The ratings widget is an automated sentiment scoring system at present. In reality there isn’t currently a sophisticated enough algorithm to replicate true human sentiment, so the scoring needs to be taken with a bit of a pinch of salt.

2. Curation – the filtering of content appears to be moderated, or highly selective and you don’t seem to get a full view of all feedback. It would appear that not all comments are posted and you get no feel for the volume of comments received.

3. Live words don’t really mean as much as they could and because you can’t click through to any of the content that the tag cloud is made up from it’s difficult to understand context. There is also a mismatch between the positive and negative scoring and the overall sentiment scoring and it hasn’t really been explained why. As an additional point, the words that make up the cloud and how they are rated negative and positive bring into question the overall sentiment algorithm again.

4. The platform is still all about push and destination web thinking. There’s almost no interaction and the lack of a human face makes it feel quite corporate.

5. The fact that the site’s been leveraged with a campaign leaves a suspicion around the original motives for the site. The satisfaction proposition is indeed very strong, if a little unspecified, but again this feels suspicious.

Now we have to say that what First Direct has done is laudable. It’s certainly much better thought out and executed than many brand forays into social media to date in any category. However, it’s more controlled than other attempts and that’s where the conflict exists – control is not what you’re looking for if true transparency is to be achieved. Now maybe we haven’t reached a point where true transparency can be achieved for a corporate company and in terms of First Direct taking things forward it’s brave and still unique within UK financial services. The digital community has unbelievably high expectations of what brands can currently achieve given the corporate structures that remain in place and until businesses are modelled around social we won’t see truly social businesses, so I guess where First Direct is, is good, however we do need to consider First Direct Live with a more watchful eye.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

Could a billion people break the existing banking model?

2010-03-23T07:43:00.004Z

In February Thomas Power the founder of eCademy wrote a blog entitled ‘What happens when Facebook becomes a bank?’. It sparked a huge debate around the role of social media in banking something that was firmly on the agenda at SXSWi last week with Smartypig, CreditKarma, Mint and Lending Club sitting on the panel. We hope to report back on the outcomes from that panel next week, however while SXSWi was running Power followed his blog up with a clarification of his position on video.

His argument runs that when subscription levels to Facebook hit a billion - as predicted by the end of 2012 - that it will hit a scale and organisational maturity that will not only facilitate the sales of simple products such as loans, insurance and savings, but will mean groups of individuals will be in a position to come together to execute group purchases and lending on a huge scale. It would be a simple task for Facebook to integrate a facility such as Zopa onto it’s platform and then users have access to all the tools they need.

If we work on the basis that Facebook's 2008 poll has some validity then 13% of users would be happy to use the platform as a bank. If we then assume an average £1,000 deposit with the bank of Facebook then at a billion users that's a £130 billion business, something financial institutions would have to sit up and take notice of.

Mark Zuckerberg is an ambitious man. Scale is his goal. The product will develop itself and as Power says the person with the biggest number of names wins the game. Financial institutions need to take note.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

Do Stella Artois know the true price of FREE banking?

2010-03-09T17:10:00.004Z

That nice man with the golden grey locks and the snazzy jumpers has gone and burst the free bubble. He’s talking about, people actually having to pay for financial services they use! In a recent release Virgin Money has come out quite deliberately on the side of demanding cash for the privilege of facilitating our balances.

Now I‘ve read quite a few of the economics manuals and they all state that the greater the competition the lower the price as everyone dives headlong towards owning market-share. Well FREE in my book seems to be a low price, however just to prove a point Halifax want to actually pay me £5 per month for my balance.

So how and why then should we consider paying for a Virgin Money Current Account? Will it be so different that it warrants me paying for it? Well only time will tell, but for my part, modern banking is little more than online facilitation nowadays. Yes when it comes to loans or savings I pay or get rewarded for my business, but Banks don’t really service me. I, like millions of others, choose to bank online and in that environment I’m a self service customer, so just why would I pay?

Added to that, there are a number of new and innovative money managers coming to market all available via the web, Mint or Wesabe from the states are some good examples. They actually help me manage and make the most of my money, which my bank doesn’t and again they’re FREE.

Now the debate about FREE banking has raged in recent years. Ever since the introduction of packaged accounts and the OFT’s pronouncements on credit card charges. All of which reached a recent crescendo with the subsequent failure on the fairness of banking fees.

So how and where does Virgin’s pronouncement fit? Well I think it makes the issue more confusing. Why can’t we just get the truth behind what it costs to run a current account? Naive I may be, but this has to be the holy-grail of modern banking. Once we have that, we the customer can decide whether we value plain vanilla or the bells and whistles of packaged accounts.

So is Mr Branson the White Knight of Banking and are the Virgin fees being brought about by actual competition or the desire for transparency? I’m not so sure it’s either. While I may desire the holy-grail, the reality of linking what a customer pays for a current account and what a bank charges is almost impossible to calculate. It depends on way too many variables; the type of financial institution; how many overheads the business carries; the cost of security; technology and the amount it pays its employees; the amount that shareholders or Venture Capitalists want as a return etc.

What worries me is it could be nothing more than a marketing trick to ensure margins. One just like Stella Artois used. They made us believe that paying a premium was worthwhile for the taste, when in fact all we got was good old fashioned Belgium cooking lager. ‘Reassuringly Expensive’ they called it!

Well for me all this increased competition is nice, but more choice doesn’t equate to better and paying for the privilege certainly doesn’t either.

David McCann
Planning Director

Simplicity, Transparency, Fraternity!

2010-02-02T18:54:00.003Z

We’ve been reading a great trendwatching brief this week called FUNCTIONALL which covers why simple, small and cheap appeals to ALL.

They make the point that products and services developed for emerging markets also appeal in mature markets too. That’s because with these stripped down, focused offers, there is often a price advantage, they are easier to use and well-designed. Examples mentioned: The Classmate PC, Tato Nano, Tune Hotels, Zeebo.

It tied in with something I was mulling over in my head (which is always handy).

In the financial services world we grapple daily with ways to simplify the complex, without misleading consumers. And actually we are on a new wave…

· The aggregators have simplified the way we buy insurance;

· Barclaycard are simplifying payments with innovative wave technology;

· In 2010, Nokia Money will allow consumers to send money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number, as well as pay for goods and services and utility bills;

· With new free tools like smartypig and mint.com coming our way, we will be able to have one, simple view of our money if we want it;

· In the pensions world, we are seeing a revival of the simpler Personal Pension rather than the more complex and costly SIPP. Auto-enrolment for NEST will help simplify pensions planning for many.

But are we going far enough or are we in ‘choice paralysis’?

Verdict consulting research shows that over the past 10 years consumers have shifted from wanting a wide range with lots of choice to wanting an edited range of what they want.

So do we really need a range of over 100 fund links on pensions? Do we really need cover for all illnesses or all eventualities in our home? Do we really need to review all financial needs before giving advice and not just cutting to the chase and focusing on what the consumer wants to sort?

Quite an opportunity for brand to be the new Tata in financial services don’t you think?

Jo Parker
CEO

So what's the ROI of social media?

2010-01-29T12:47:00.003Z

It's a question we're being asked consistently, it's a question @equalman has answered very succinctly.

When two passions collide

2010-01-25T10:00:00.007Z

Two things happened last week that caught my attention the first was that Northern Rock agreed to continue its sponsorship of Newcastle United. The second was Billy Bragg's refusal to pay tax if RBS continued to pay bonuses totalling £1.4 billion.

Both RBS and Northern Rock as I’m sure you’re aware are publicly owned and for all intent and purposes could be controlled by Government.

And yet here we have two cases of very public non-interference by the controlling interest.

Now I could start off on the rights and wrongs of a government sponsoring a privately owned football team or indeed funding the hyper-inflated salaries of Investment Bank fat cats, but that’s not my point. What did catch my train of thought was the similarity between these two disparate sectors, there are in fact a huge number of parallels between them.

Both sectors rely on continual success whether on the pitch or share price to maintain their position in their respective leagues, and both have to pay heavily for the best talent available.

While we may baulk at the thought of paying footballers £150,000 per week salaries the truth is that that’s what economists call market forces, the old supply and demand thing to you and me.

In fact, teams that pay more are investing in their success, no matter what Deloitte may say about Brian Laws, sorry another football finance link!

Banking and finance like football is a fine balancing act and some get it wrong, Portsmouth like RBS invested heavily, but relied upon short term funding which has left them in a precarious position. Others like Manchester United have had to restructure their debt, not dissimilar to Lloyds current rights issue and so it goes on an on.

What of a resurgence amongst the mutuals? Well again you can look at the Real Madrid operating company, which is a supporter-owned, not-for-profit business. This has looked to grow through acquisition and merger borrowing heavily to buy the talent of the likes of Ronaldo, Kaka and Benezma

Well back to the things that started me thinking, if we took Mr Bragg's advice and refused to pay the £1.4billion which is mostly paid to front line staff who earn on average less than £20,000 per annum, this I believe would have a knock on affect and ultimately hurt the performance and competitiveness of the business.

The last analogy I’d like to make is that the premiership is seen by many as the best football league in the world and if we want to maintain that place then we need to reward and invest. It’s a hard fact that the Financial Services industry and the banking sector still account for about 15% of UK GDP. If we don’t invest we’ll relegate ourselves to the third division of banking, playing amongst the Accrington Stanley’s of Building Societies and not the Premier league of BoA, BNP Paribas or Santander.

As for the sponsorship of Newcastle by Northern Rock I can’t believe that it has been allowed, I see it as a ludicrous and outlandish waste of taxpayers money, which financially supports the privately owned the rising stars of the Championship… Well what did you expect from a die hard Chelsea supporter ;)

Extract from Myths and Facts About Football

Fact: Player performance is strongly affected by relative income

Or in other words, when a player's salary rises (or drops) relative to his team-mates' pay, his performance improves (or declines). German and Swiss economists demonstrated this by studying goals, assists and ball usage (and salaries) of players at 28 clubs in the German Bundesliga between 1995 and 2004. The "robust findings" show the relationship is not simply that "better players earn more" but that the "causality runs from pay to performance, not the other way round". Willingness to perform, as in many jobs, depends on relative pay.

David McCann
Planning Director

Would you move your Current Account to Tesco or Virgin Money?

2010-01-20T12:23:00.010Z

There was an interesting video from Brand Republic (see below) of some consumer vox pops about what they thought of the new banks and whether they would move their current accounts.

Couple of things jumped out at me.

That these brands are not seen as knowing about running a bank, so it feels like a stretch too far.

That Tesco’s is seen as taking over – a brand that is dominating our lives – and we do know that when it comes to money, people don’t like having all their eggs in one basket. We actually like privacy with money so we don’t want one brand knowing too much about us.

The other thing that surprised me was there wasn’t more dissatisfaction with peoples’ existing banks – quite the opposite. And if good mortgage deals are only available to current account holders, especially with interest rate rises, then this is a huge barrier.

Obviously these are the reactions from a few and it’s much, much too early to call. We don’t know what the offer is yet – what will be different or better about the experience with Tesco or Virgin.

But fascinating times – can’t wait to see how it pans out.

Jo Parker
CEO

Financial Services is about to become much more fun

2010-01-18T09:01:00.001Z

Teamspirit spent two days last week at the first social media in financial services conference. The brainchild of Phil Calvert at IFAlife - the specialist IFA's social network - it set out a bold vision for how IFAs should be approaching their online interaction in an era of online connectedness.

In doing so it helped to set out a model for a more connected, more life planning focus, that would put building a relationship through online social means at the heart of the IFA's relationship with their customers. This was the New Model Adviser's conference, it wasn't about suggesting that IFAs do a bit of blogging. This was about reaching out to new audiences, building networks through multiple channels and turning an IFA's social graph into it's commercial graph. This was about transforming an IFA's business plan and putting marketing at it's heart.

With high quality best practice presentations from Google, LinkedIn, youTube, BTTradespace and the BBC IFAs were exposed to the ways they could transform their organisation with the low cost social tools that are now available to all. This was backed up by the real life executional examples set out by Jaime Steele at Northern Financial Services who are using video in particular to transform their approach to market and Nick Bamford at Informed Choice who outlined the company's new personal finance information, guidance and implementation site Brilliant with Money. These are two organisations already highly engaged in building significant online presence and unlike the past are keen to share the learnings they have made with the rest of the industry.

The best practice was supported by a focus on how to help build and connect a small business from Thomas Power at Ecademy and Alan Stevens 'the Media Coach.' Their straight talking common sense approaches to building trust with audiences went hand in hand with Graham Jones' explanations around understanding the psychology of modern communications online. These were all key to developing a new level of empowerment for IFA businesses.

The new advisers are coming (some would say they're already here). These are nimble, relationship led, content hungry entrepeneurs. Mike Linskey helped to outline what the future can look like for these businesses with excellent examples from the states such as mint.com, Smartypig, Billshrink and Centscity.

This is what IFAs are going to look like from now on it's up to providers to provide the tools they need to execute and the content they can use to help them plan for their clients. IFAs are no longer anywhere near as reliant on providers to ensure their businesses grow and make profits and providers need to understand this before they get completely cut out of the loop.

Notes from the conference:

Chris Fox's overview
Richard Allum 'The Paraplanner's' thoughts

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

Have they cracked it with nest?

2010-01-13T18:05:00.004Z

Well I’ve read the research on the PADA site (am I sad?) and seen the video

And 10 out of 10 for transparency and accountability for a branding project. It’s also been developed cost-effectively. You can see why PADA have gone with this route and it clearly has resonated with target audiences. So what do I think?

Well to be honest I don’t thing a name and logo is that important, it just won’t be what will encourage workers to participate in the scheme. Sure it can’t be a complete turkey and as our Planning Director David said the other day, it sounds like many 90s brand names, like the Eggs and Cahoots of this world, which haven’t exactly been success stories have they? I also think calling it a Savings Trust misleads – this is for retirement isn’t it and as far as I know there are no plans to have 401k flexibility? But that aside, it’s simple and accessible which I really like.

Powerful and successful brands are those that understand that it isn’t just what you say, but also what you do and what others say about you. And with an estimated 6 to 8 million people expected to save into nests and £8bn annual investment, the stakes are high.

So what are they doing to make this a success and what are others saying about them?

The most important change is auto-enrolment and this single decision will make the difference to how we save as a nation. Any watering down of auto-enrolment will just mean we have a new stakeholder by another name. Ensuring that employers know how to communicate this effectively to their employees will really be the key to success.

Nests’ reputation will be badly tarnished if companies, who already have company pensions, cut their contributions down to the new levels of 1% - rising to 3% by 2017. The LibDems have estimated 40,000 companies may do that, the Assoc of Consulting Actuaries think a quarter of employers will reduce their scheme benefits and 15% may close existing schemes altogether and move to nest. That will mean that the very people the Government are trying to help will have even less in their nest egg for retirement. The issue of means tested benefits also needs addressing urgently too.

There is a real opportunity for social change and to encourage saving for retirement in this country, so let’s hope that in the next 6 years the focus is on making sure that:
auto-enrolment stays and there is fantastic communications support for employers to employees that is simple and motivating;
that contribution levels go up;
and the underlying investment choices are robust so that the retirement nest egg will be much more than means-tested benefits.

Then nest will be a cracking brand. At the moment it is just too early to say.

Jo

Teamspirit appoints two Creative Directors for the New Year

2010-01-11T08:56:00.004Z

Teamspirit the financial services specialist integrated agency has promoted Tim Nicholson and James Maxwell to the roles of Creative Director for the New Year.

Tim has been Head of Art at Teamspirit for the past 5 years. Tim studied Graphic Design at Maidstone College of Art, the year below Tracy Emin, graduating with a 2:1. He was Head of Art at DDM advertising eventually taking the role of Creative Director at Partners BDDH's integrated shop, Aviator.

He joined Teamspirit 5 years ago after a 10 year stint freelancing for many above and below the line agencies such as Saatchi and Saatchi, TBWA/GGT Direct (Natwest village), WAVV (launching the More th>n brand), Joshua, Rapier (Film four and Barclays bank), Craik Jones (Prudential, Orange, Virgin Trains) and Proximity London (launching Alliance & Leicester's first ISA).

James Maxwell has been a senior copywriter at Teamspirit for 4 years.
With a background in International Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, James did a post-graduate in Copywriting and Marketing Communications at the AAA school in Cape Town.

He made a name for himself writing and producing ads at the 567 CapeTalk Radio Station, researching marketing strategy, writing websites and even had a small stint at Buckingham Palace. After time at Steel-London working with AOL and the Financial Times, he moved to Teamspirit.

Commenting on these promotions, Kirsty Maxey Managing Director at Teamspirit said: “We are delighted to promote both Tim and James who are very talented and have been integral to the award winning work we have developed over the past few years. We continue to grow our multi-discipline creative team and we have exciting plans that they will help us to deliver.”

Ten for 2010

2010-01-08T12:31:00.002Z

Ten for 2010

View more documents from Teamspirit.

This is the week of predictions, whether it’s the year of the Tiger or the year of Tax the first week of January is awash with crystal balls and hopes of joy and worries of doom.

Well, I don’t want to break with tradition so I won’t here’s some of ours, I’m not promising anything revolutionary or indeed any accuracy, I predicted the market to close on 4750 and it closed at 5400 so that’ll give you an idea of expected acceptable predictive tolerances.

Obvious things to watch out for will be changing political leadership, changing taxation, a bumbling economy and lots of change in the banking sector.

Just on the banking sector my question is whether the arrival of new banks will really bring about any change and increase competition or will it be just more of the same?

And the winning numbers this weekend will be…

The highs and lows of 2009 and the potential for 2010

2009-12-22T13:10:00.000Z

If one thing is certain it is that recovery is far from certain… we’re not out of the woods yet!

With house prices on the up, Quantitative Easing measures seemingly working and consumer confidence in their ability to accrue savings climbing for the third consecutive month in November there are reasons to be cheerful.

But, given the irrepressible march of RDR and impact on adviser/provider business; ongoing uncertainty about the impact of personal accounts and continuing brittleness of investor sentiment (as evidenced in the immediate aftermath of the Dubai revelations)… 2010 could well have some interesting twists and turns in store!

Highs and Lows Of 2009

View more presentations from Teamspirit.

The Year in Digital

2009-12-21T15:37:00.018Z

It's that time of the year when we're forced to face the fact that the year's whizzed by and we can't actually remember what on earth happened. So at Teamspirit we thought we'd take you back through the year's biggest digital events. It's undoubtedly been the year that social media/communications/ideas/interactions or whatever you prefer to call them have been on the tip of everyone's tongue. Facebook passed 350 million users, there are now 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, and of course Twitter has been this year's biggest story, a fact verified when it was officially confirmed as 'Top word of the Year'.

However there were plenty of other stories breaking. There have been huge moves in the search arena with Microsoft launching Bing, Yahoo! seemingly giving up and jumping in with Bing and Google trying to take over the world and all the while real-time search partnerships being announced by pretty much everyone along the way. It still wasn't quite the year of mobile despite the fact that HTC's, iPhone's, N97's and Palm Pre's all faced off against each other.

It wasn’t all good news either. Geocities finally closed down, Microsoft lost a ton of staff, Myspace had to completely reinvent itself and E-bay's profits fell hugely as the recession bit. And all of this against a backdrop of the Digital Britain report in which the government attempted to encapsulate Britain's approach to Digital over the coming years.

So all in all a real rollercoaster and here it all is, in links

January 2009

One billion unique users on the Internet

February 2009

Facebook changes terms of service creating big frustration with user community
Speculation about Twitter charging brands for commercial use

March 2009

Many e-mail campaigns alienate customers
Facebook beats Google in steering niche traffic
Google Releases Behavioural Advertising
Social Networks Pass Email in Usage

April 2009

Over 60 percent of people who sign up for Twitter do not return to using it the following month
Brand Mentions Preferred over Ads
Google releases Google Me
Internet surveys combined with traditional research methods are becoming the norm

May 2009

Microsoft announces Bing.com
Google reannounces Google Wave
Online Video Usage Up 53 Percent in ’09
Forrester Predicts Huge Growth for Social Media Marketing

June 2009

Facebook beats Myspace traffic in the US
Time spent on social networks doubles in a year
Facebook user names for user profiles and Facebook pages
The government releases the Digital Britain Report
iPhone release the 3GS against the Nokia N97

July 2009

Social media use soars among b-to-b marketers
Microsoft now powers Yahoo! search
Google announces their own operating system: Google Chrome OS
Facebook gives users more control over their status updates

August 2009

Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index is unveiled
Facebook announces real-time search
Twitter announces an API to help control, standardise and mainstream retweeting
Facebook up their challenge to Google with the purchase of Friendfeed

September 2009

Twitter gets an (unofficial) app store
Brands become mainstream on Twitter- mentioned in 1 in 5 Tweets
Companies increasing spend in web 2.0 technologies
Google releases Sidewiki

October 2009

Geocities goes out of business
Bing announces Tweets to appear in search results
Technorati release their State of the blogosphere
YouTube is routinely serving more than a billion video views per day
Yahoo stops using meta keywords for search

November 2009

Linkedin and Twitter integrate
Twitter creates Twitter Lists
Salesforce.com announces Chatter, social computing for enterprise companies

December 2009

Twitter Starts Testing Features for Businesses
MySpace and Facebook sign real-time search deals with Google
Facebook Pushes People to Go Public
Time spent on Facebook by 18-24 year olds declines
Google Announces New Offerings in Real-Time, Mobile and Social Search
Morgan Stanley state 'Mobile Internet Market Will Be Twice The Size of Desktop Internet'

Happy Christmas from all at Teamspirit

2009-12-09T16:04:00.003Z

Click here for Teamspirit's Christmas message.

Teamspirit hires new digital team

2009-12-03T16:17:00.006Z

Teamspirit has hired a 5-strong digital team to join its existing digital team and strengthen its offer to clients. The new team comes from Peterborough-based Lightstone who announced they were closing last week.

The team headed by David Simpson have worked together on brands such as Alliance & Leicester, BGL, Ascentric, Yorkshire Building Society, Nestlé and the BBC over the last 6 years. David joins as Digital Director to work alongside Teamspirit’s Crispin Heath. All of the team will be based in Teamspirit’s office in Farringdon, London.

Commenting on the news, Jo Parker CEO of Teamspirit said “The digital work we do for clients has nearly doubled in the last 2 years and we see that growth continuing next year. What we really loved about David and his team is not only their experience in developing great websites both b2b and for consumers, but also their passion for integrating what they do with the offline world so that the customer experience of the brand is seamless. This is an exciting addition for us at the end of a successful year.”

David added “Financial services has been our focus for many years, so joining Teamspirit is a perfect match and an exciting new opportunity for all of us. We’re looking forward to working with the rest of the team to deliver great, results for clients across a wider range of channels.”

For enquiries please call:
Jo Parker, Crispin Heath or David Simpson on 020 7360 7878

The billion pound-a-gram

2009-11-28T13:25:00.009Z

Be honest with yourself, how often have you almost fallen asleep as you've had data analytics presented to you. The subject is dry, complex, unemotional and boring. Unless od course you're David McCandless. McCandless has turned data visuaisation into a thing of beauty. He has a unique ability to simplify the most complicated of subjects, contextualise the issues and tell a story in one visual blow.

His latest piece for the Guardian gets beneath the enormous numbers that have been flying around in the past couple of years and helps to show us what the really big numbers really mean and when to understand that Roman Abramovich's £7 billion fortune is mere pocket change.

Click to view enlarged version

To view more of McCandless' visual loveliness I suggest a visit to his website:
informationisbeautiful.net/

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

News – it was a great night for Teamspirit in Marketing Effectiveness Awards last night!

2009-11-25T15:57:00.003Z

Teamspirit and Teamspirit PR picked up a number of awards and commendations at Tuesday’s 2009 Financial Services Forum Awards for Marketing Effectiveness held at Guildhall.

Teamspirit won overall Most Effective Integrated B2B Campaign for Prudential, which was also commended in the most effective advertising campaign category for the same work, with sales increases for Q1 2009 exceeding all expectations and APE sales up by at least by 290% for some wrappers.

Legal & General Retail Investments work was also highly commended in the Most Effective Integrated B2B campaign and also in the Most Effective Public Relations category.

This was a fantastic result for our clients and shows that marketing effectiveness, especially in such challenging economic conditions, is at the heart of what we deliver.

Joanne Parker
Chief Executive

Give me dull performance any day.

2009-11-21T08:30:00.002Z

Looking at asset manager advertising in preparation for a pitch this week got me thinking about why we need to see 50% over 5 years and similar big numbers. We’re trained to see these figures as good, but if the last 18 months have shown anything, it’s that the bigger the upside, in general the bigger the downside.

And the real reason that we need this kind of performance is that as a species we prevaricate. It’s only when the problem is looming that we start doing. And when it comes to retirement that’s very bad news. Starting retirement plans in your 30s is simply too late, and even your 20s is leaving it a bit late. No, the real answer is to start preparing for the end of a life when it’s just beginning. Start investing an achievable £178/month at age 1 and you get £1,000,000 at age 66, needing only 5% pa compounding; to get the same sum starting at 30? A slightly less achievable £898. To get that nice round million using £178/month over 35 years that easy 5% pa has to rise to a slightly less easy (and probably more risky) 12.09%. And of course most pensions start later.

So if I’m lucky enough to have grandchildren one day maybe I’ll do something super sensible and take out a pension for them. That really would be a gift that kept on giving!

Jim Poulter
Client Services Director

Guess the national debt...

2009-11-19T15:03:00.005Z

...now guess agai...

...and ag...

Just found this from Coffee House - The Spectator's blog. It's scary stuff.

Are we ready for the Re-Set World?

2009-11-16T09:35:00.005Z

As the FTSE bounces back over 5,200, the savings ratio creeps up to the best it has been since late 1993, there is an audible sigh. The worst of the recession is over. By 2010 we will be ‘back to normal’.

I don’t think so. I agree with Professor Goffee, of the London Business School that “It could be that sections of the economy never recover in the way we understand them now. Financial services will not be the same. Consumers will think about value harder.”

The financial services world will never be (nor never should be) the same again. It truly has been Re-Set. And here’s why.

To quote Mervyn King :“The sheer scale of support to the banking sector is breathtaking. In the UK, in the form of direct or guaranteed loans and equity investment, it is not far short of a trillion (that is,one thousand billion) pounds, close to two-thirds of the annual output of the entire economy. To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform.”

Not surprisingly, confidence in financial services companies has sunk to a new low as it emerged this month that British consumers even trust the media more than they do the finance industry. Just 7 per cent agreed with the statement “In the current economic climate, I trust the financial services industry to look out for me”, while 60 per cent disagreed. Only 18 per cent of those surveyed said they trusted the financial industry, compared with 34 per cent for the media and 19 per cent for the government – the two sectors traditionally occupying the'bottom rungs of the trust ladde'. Four in 10 added that they no longer had confidence in banks’ marketing messages. (source: DMA Oct 09)

So what is the new Re-Set paradigm for financial services? My personal view is that - there will be retailers who enter the market and put the service back into financial services - who really know how to look after consumers. See O2 money, watch out for Tesco, Boots and Metro Bank. They will all change our relationship with the sector. The new Re-Set world will be about service and experience, not profit and performance.

And consumers will also want reassurance and transparency that they are being treated fairly and the Government will step in and regulate and simplify products – which will mean a brand’s reputation and the social contract they offer with their customers will be critical as a key differentiator.

This Re-Set world should give us all in the sector the opportunity to Re-Start. To think about services and products from the consumers perspective, rather than continuing with the status-quo.

But how many financial services companies are planning for the Re-Set world now?

Joanne Parker
CEO

Is peanut butter and chocolate really the perfect combination?

2009-11-13T11:35:00.006Z

On Monday Linked In and Twitter announced that they would be errrr... 'Linking In' with the introduction of Twitter updates into the Linked In status bar.

For some reason the two companies have decided to use a peanut butter and chocolate analogy that sounds slightly weird but hey that's silicon valley for you. Tubs of spreads are close to those guys hearts.

But what of the Twitter #In combination? At first it seemed to me a rather unholy alliance, but on reflection it's probably an excellent combo with real obvious value for both parties.

Recently Twitter has definitely been striving to be perceived as more of a business tool than it had been previously. The recently added list feature proved this. By integrating with Linked In this seems like the perfect way to connect and demonstrate Twitter's utility to a huge community of social mediaites on Linked In that have failed to see the point of Twitter up until now.

On the flip side Linked In has suffered the opposite problem. It's been stuck in an enterprise user rut and isn't seen as particularly cool. Activity on Linked In can seem like it moves at a snails pace in comparison to other social platforms, but by integrating Twitter suddenly the platform becomes a realtime bonanza.

Time will tell what the impact will be, but this week's most unlikely alliance could definitely prove a winner.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

The rebirth of Twitter as a social utility

2009-11-06T13:32:00.004Z

At the end of last week Twitter launched lists. Lists allow registrants to create or follow lists of Twitter users that are useful or interesting to them in a more segmented way and without necessarily having to follow those individuals.

In one very carefully calculated move Twitter has managed to filter the noise incredibly successfully. The idea was jumped upon by the early adopters and by Monday morning there were over 6.5 million lists created.

The move by Twitter coincided with the first major newsworthy celebrity defection (or so everyone thought), followed by announcements by sports teams and the entertainment industry that they were asking their stars to either pull out of using the platform or limit their interaction to conversations outside their core job.It would appear that Twitter is moving away from being a media fuelled celeb filled vanity vehicle, towards being a more powerful social utility. It's a method of linking, connecting, researching and discovering, which has always been there, but had been run over by the media bandwagon driven by Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and the like.

The move hasn't been without its critics some have said that Twitter should have concentrated more on its core functionality before launching lists. Others (and very influential others) have argued that lists actually exclude those that are not yet power users and therefore hampers potential mass adoption. This is an argument that simply didn't wash with Robert Scoble who argued that social media isn't always about one big love in, but actually sometimes needs to be filtered so that users can find the conversations they are most interested in.

Despite these arguments lists have been siezed upon as a tool by organisations who wish to aggregate content more effectively, notably news organisations which have started to filter and segment vigorously. We're at the peak of the hype cycle with lists at present, but frankly the trough of disillusionment isn't going to be very deep. Twitter has definitely taken a giant leap forward in its battle with its competitors and by all accounts it's not finished yet.

If you're not following lists yet we have a few suggestions for you:

The Teamspirit team
Interesting Financial Services commentary
A list of IFAs that Tweet
Most popular Twitter lists

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

What the FSA should (and shouldn’t) do next…

2009-10-16T16:14:00.002+01:00

Recent reports told us that the savings ratio jumped in the second quarter of this year to 5.9%, the highest it’s been since late 1993. The figures are a sharp turnaround from the first quarter of 2008 when the savings ratio went negative for the first time. We’re even apparently saving more than the Japanese, for the first time in 30 years, and they are famously cautious as a nation.

And let’s be honest this isn’t being driven by attractive savings rates is it? According to Bank of England figures, the average cash ISA paid interest of just 0.41% in August, a tenth of the level a year ago. Consumers have also been reducing their unsecured debt at the fastest rate since records were first kept in 1993, repaying £300m a month.

Predictions are that the savings ratio could go even higher, into double digits (in the last recession it was 12%) and the UK is still below its’ long-run average of 8%.

All good news, on the face of it anyway.

But what I was mulling over as I was waiting for my flight back from Edinburgh yesterday, was this.

Surely we should be thinking about how we move the nations’ relationship with money away from boom and bust? Are we happy that we only save as a country when our financial system goes into meltdown and we are worried we are going to lose our jobs? Just as the Labour party looked to move the economy away from boom and bust, shouldn’t we be doing the same with saving and lending behaviours as well?

So this is what I think the FSA should do next.
They should do a consumer campaign now about how much people are saving to reinforce the behaviour and appeal to our herd mentality (read Nudge for more!). Make people feel like they are missing out if they’re not. And they should keep reinforcing it over time.

So what they shouldn’t do, is a one-off big bang campaign. And it should certainly not be advertising led. It should employ the best in brand engagement communications from social media to getting key influencers talking on their behalf. They should make saving the next cool. (Oh and by the way, if the FSA read this, I know a great agency that would do a great job on this, just call 020 7360 7878 or tweet me @joteam)

Jo Parker
CEO

What is the future of paid for content?

2009-10-16T09:32:00.005+01:00

It was reported this week that the economic downturn has dramatically hastened people to switch their media purchasing behaviour. In place of paid for paper and magazine purchases people are turning to online news for their fix begging the question, what is the future of paid for content?

The print media is going through a rather protracted period of angst around the subject of their long term survival and how best to extract value from the original content they produce. As Nick Crocker pointed out last week in Mashabl e there is a lot the print media has to learn from the music industry. The printed media industry is increasingly sticking to their guns, becoming more litigious over the years and without (up until recently) really shaping or engaging with the future production and distribution models of paid for content, in much the same way as the music industry has for the past decade or so. Their failure has been in identifying what is of greatest value to readers. It is conveniently forgotten that shortly after Radiohead released 'In Rainbows' as part of a 'pay as much as you want' model, that they followed up with a retail release of the album through XL Recordings and have gone on to sell over a million copies worldwide. This was a brilliant piece of marketing and PR, backed up with sound commercial sense, an innovative model that should be a bench mark for the thinking around the packaging of content.

If the traditional media are to have similar successes they need to be similarly innovative. The media moguls - led by Rupert Murdoch of course - have been increasingly looking at ‘paid for’ as the new way. However some of the echoes of the music industry have been heard in recent days with Murdoch decrying search engines and in particular Google for stealing News Corps' content. This sounds more like a man fiddling while Rome burns than one that’s engaging with the new world. The reality is that over the past few years the news industry has got rid of highly qualified, quality journalists and replaced them with syndicated content and bulked out lifestyle pieces. That has resulted in original content being commoditised and in the process hugely devalued.

The industry does appear to be embracing Murdoch's idea of pay walls based along segmented lines. It seems like a good experiment and should tell the industry a lot about their customers' habits. The trick will be not to introduce it on a blanket basis and thereby alienate the whole market in one fell swoop. If that happens people will switch off and find an alternative. It's never been easier to switch allegiance, so the industry needs to tread carefully.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

A statement about my pension .... or my provider?

2009-10-15T10:49:00.001+01:00

This week I got my pension statement, detailing my family's projected quality of life post-work. The standard low, medium and high projections were there as always, alerting me as to whether I can look forward to a cup, bowl or full plate (ooo!) of flavoursome gruel in my dotage.

Given the past year and the stock-market's nose-dive, expectations were not high. My level of interests were high, however, as my pension is the primary mainstay of my standard of living from retirement to pearly gates.

So what information does the provider I have entrusted with this important task give me? A standard letter telling me this is my bi-annual statement (I knew that) and a lovely statement with standard projections, confirming the decline in my pension (I guessed that). Nothing else. Nada. Zip. Same letter (apart from the date) as I got during boom time in fact.

I had a hundred questions. How much of the drop in my pension was down to poor provider performance (say, in relation to benchmarks) and how much down to markets? Were there elements of the underlying funds that were performing fourth quartile and I should ditch?

Frankly, a little added value from my learned provider would have been appreciated. What was my learned provider's view on the next six months? Their view on fund classes? Of changes in legislation and taxation that could benefit me. What about an outbound phone call asking me if I have any questions. I just feel they are taking the money sometimes. They are charging me after all. I've had to change providers over the years and, unfortunately, I can report that the same experience is meted out by all the household name providers I've been with.

Research (and common sense) shows that the receipt of statements has a direct impact on perceptions of the provider's brand (and from there my likelihood to recommend them or buy other products from them). Unhappy experiences we also relate to friends and relatives, passing on our perceptions. Wouldn't even cost much, if that's the barrier that's put up.

Pension statements are often the only direct communication brands have with their pension customers, so isn't it an opportunity to give a little thought to?

Oh yes, I'm changing providers in the next two months, did I tell you?.

Mark Hollander
Client Services Director

Do you see, Grasshopper?

2009-10-02T14:21:00.004+01:00

I was saddened to hear earlier this year of the death of one of my childhood heroes - David Caradine. To my sons he will be remembered for playing Bill in Tarantino’s Kill Bill, but to me Caradine will forever be Kwai Chang Caine from the classic TV series Kung Fu.

Like thousands of teenage boys in the mid 70’s watching Kung Fu was the TV highlight of the week. I used to daydream of being able to floor Philip Hughes or Gareth Penman (the school bullies) with the same ease that Cain despatched the unscrupulous gold prospector or corrupt sheriff.

Although the short-lived fight scenes in Kung Fu were always good value, my favourite bits of the show were Caine’s flashbacks to his time in the Shaolin monastery, where Master Po would dispense liberal amounts of Confusion wisdom to ‘Grasshopper’, Po’s nickname for Caine.

For old time’s sake I watched an episode on a re-mastered DVD. A couple of things surprised me; firstly how slow the fight scenes were compared to today’s martial arts films, and secondly how interesting and authentic the ‘wisdom’ actually was. In one particular episode ‘Dark Angel’, Master Po tells Cain “The present is rooted in the past. It is through these roots we draw nourishment and strength.”

What’s all this got to do with advertising? Recently a freelance digital designer was trying to convince me that a blue square was an idea. I said it wasn’t. He disagreed and tried to convince me otherwise explaining how the colour and shape could dominate takeovers and expandables and ‘carry the message’. What message? I asked.

Professionally my ‘roots’ in advertising were from a time when there were no Macs, photo libraries or You Tube. An idea had to be robust enough to stand up to interrogation without all the extra ‘loving-up’ modern technology can add. A good idea has always drawn nourishment and strength from within itself, its own depth, ingenuity or novelty. I’m not one of those creatives who bemoan technology; I love it. But let’s get honest about what is an idea and what isn’t. And when it ‘isn’t’ let’s not dress it up in digital king’s clothes.

Later on in the episode Dark Angel Master Po asks Caine “What is a tree without roots?” I’d say it’s a bit like a concept masquerading as an idea only to be blown over by the slightest intellectual interrogation.

Geoff Turner
Creative Director

Brands under fire, beware Google Sidewiki

2009-09-25T15:44:00.006+01:00

Google quietly released a new social tool this week called Sidewiki Sidewiki is an addition to the Google toolbar, so far, so innocuous. However this could possibly enable the most visible feedback online brands have yet to face.

The Google Sidewiki toolbar allows any user with a Google account to comment, on any page, on any site. That effectively means users have the ability to graffiti corporate sites. Google say they are monitoring comments and have provided a reporting tool if posts are deemed malicious, however if the criticism is constructive, instructive and therefore destructive then the implications are massive.

Over the course of this year there has been a greater and greater demand for brands to listen from consumers, technology companies, agencies, in fact too many voices to list. In a way it's been convenient for companies to ignore it. If it's all going off on Twitter, or Facebook or “some blog” then it's out of sight and therefore out of mind (of course this an absurdity). What Sidewiki does though is bring it to the doorstep and now anyone can graffiti all over your front door. Now it's already been declared dangerous and doomed to fail and simply a way of Google monetising the whole web, but this is a Google beta product and it'll inevitably change and over time integrate Google's other features. And in the meantime the comments are going to start cluttering up the doormat and they're going to be difficult to ignore.

This kind of interwoven peer to peer feedback is the future of the web. It's going to force companies to change the way they operate so once again with gusto. Start listening and start taking heed.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

Tooth fairy index anyone?

2009-09-17T17:47:00.002+01:00

When I was a kid and my first tooth fell out (actually it was punched out in a bit of a fracas over some space dust but that’s another story) the tooth fairy magically passed by overnight, took the incisor and left a shiny 10 pence.

Fast forward a few years (actually more like 4 decades) and the going rate for that first tooth for my daughter is a mighty £2.00. That’s a massive 2,000% increase or 52% year on year.

Compare that to house prices over the same period: 1,477% (source Nationwide); FTSE All Share: 1,396%. Less a sterling performance more an enamelled one!

But a more important point is that my daughter at 7 struggles to comprehend what that £2.00 will buy. The maths lessons at her primary school still have calculations involving buying cakes for 3p. 3p!!!! When did you last see a cake for 3p? Or 8 Mojos for a penny for that matter. Parents and schools need to get kids to understand how money works and the real prices of things as early as possible or we’ll be stuck with bad financial habits for another generation.

As for me, anyone know how I can access the Tooth Fairy index?

Jim Poulter
Client Services Director

Have you looked at consumer finance advertising recently?

2009-09-08T17:27:00.003+01:00

I have and it isn’t very inspiring.

A lot of it is still rate led (even though advertising a rate of 2.80% would have seen as madness not that long ago).

Much of it is just boring.

Take the NatWest ads. The tv ads are about helpful banking and then in press ads they tell us “This year, we’re making £12.2bn available to help the property market.” It’s not wrong. It’s just all rather worthy and hard work.

HSBC ask us to “Realise the retirement you want with the help of our global expertise” with a photo of a lady having a golfing lesson. I’m not sure where the benefit is.

Halifax are more inspiring, encouraging us to save for the special things in life and for life’s lumps and bumps. But it all seems rather everyday.

So what’s missing?

Brands outside of financial services are much more optimistic. They make you smile, they thank-you for their attention. Budweiser are sure “Good times, they’re out there.” Even the rather marvellous Child Poverty work doesn’t lecture us, it gives us inspiring facts to get us involved in their campaign.

In financial services, the ‘meerkat factor’ has wowed and the results are astonishing for comparethemarket who work in a highly commoditised marketplace. I miss the ‘I want to be a slug’ ads from the Pru, or Allied Dunbar’s ‘We won’t make a drama out of a crisis’.

Consumer finance advertising just needs to get more engaging, more entertaining, more emotive, less left brain.

Given the news last week that the debt owed by British consumers has fallen for the first time since records began, it feels like now is the right time to be motivating, not confusing or mundane.

Oh and by the way, I do know that advertising is only a small part of the picture here. It’s about how a brand behaves. But actually I do think advertising is a window into brands and their businesses and what is missing is the desire to inspire.

Jo Parker
CEO

There's no queue at the bank

2009-09-04T16:19:00.001+01:00

Having spent a few hours in the bank this month trying to sort out my mortgage something occurred to me. Although a lot of people (including myself) partake in online banking, and telephone banking, the big queue at the bank suggests that you do still need to go into a branch for some financial transactions.

With the power of tweet and other instant microblogging services, we could get updates from them telling us of the progress of the queues. It would certainly be handy for most of us Londoners who can nip out of work knowing we won't be faced with a huge queue at Barclays.

Emma Partridge
Art Director

Do you use LinkedIn and/or Facebook?

2009-08-04T14:08:00.009+01:00

It's a question I asked on LinkedIn itself the other day and unsurprisingly unanimously the answer was Linked In for business, Facebook for personal. I expanded and asked if others were using Twitter or Friendfeed or any other social network and again the majority response was I don't have time.

The reason I asked in the first place was I just can't get along with Linked In. I'm a big fan of social networking and in terms of it's educative qualities it's been an enormous addition to my professional development. Twitter has almost completely surplanted my RSS feedreader as a research tool. Friendfeed helps me to understand who influences those that I choose to follow. Facebook keeps me in touch with friends who due to family pressure I don't get to see much and cousins I don't see regularly, you know the score. Delicious and Digg help me to share my bookmarks and content I like.

All of these platforms help me be social and hopefully helpful. They allow me to be myself but also keep on top of business and that's where I part the way with LinkedIn. It's not a social networking site, nothing about it is social. It's about networking, but not the ecademy way, it's more the bad glass of sweet white wine and guard up kind of way. It's not intuitive, it doesn't aid in the sharing of information, in essence it's far too closed.

I concede that it is great at finding professionals and if you are looking for a job, but Twitter and Friendfeed do that as well as everything else and as an added bonus you're likely to understand whether you'll get on with them on personal level as well which for me is just as important.

In my opinion it really needs to step up it's game if it's going to continue to grow, there are rumblings that there is a major overhaul in the planning stage, I just hope it's a significant improvement.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

p.s. I did have an amazing response to my question when it was posed on LinkedIn but it still isn't enough. I know, I'm too dogmatic.

Search just got interesting again

2009-07-30T12:14:00.003+01:00

All the talk yesterday was about the long awaited Yahoo/Microsoft search deal, but that was only half of the story when it came to how competition in the search market has ramped up.

The launch of Bing in May finally paved the way for the 10 year Yahoo search deal and the search engine will now be integrated into Yahoo as it's search platform. There is no doubt that the deal furthers Steve Ballmer's insatiable need to take on Google and with just under a third of the search market Microsoft finally look like they could gain some traction.

However, what Google and Microsoft have yet to crack is the newly emergent real-time search model. Two developments occurred on Wednesday that took this into new territory. Twitter relaunched their homepage and switched the emphasis away from followers and into search and arguably turned itself into a destination portal. Some argue that this won't actually benefitted users, however as websites become less important to users and the importance of web presence becomes more and more essential the body shift from Twitter makes sense. At the same time the newly launched Collecta.com improved it's already impressive offering by adding an additional layer of search capability with video and images.

Microsoft has got bingtweets in beta and Google launched search options back in May but the improvements in realtime search is going to keep the big boys on their toes. Ultimately the smaller players look like acquisition fodder, but the longer they stay ahead of the curve and hold out against a takeover the more expensive the battle's going to be to win. Certainly Wednesday will go down as a pivotal moment in the field of search and certainly from the marketing community's perspective Wednesday's announcement was music to the ears.

Crispin Heath

Head of Digital

Is consumer trust online misplaced?

2009-07-10T13:45:00.005+01:00

It's true that trust in the Financial Sector is at an all time low, but the sector is not unique and many brands are suffering from the loss of corporate trust amongst consumers.

From a digital perspective you'll hear many commentators stating that the trust model now lies squarely with peer to peer relationships. You'll trust your friends, those your linked in with, your followers etc. before anyone else, but why? When it comes down to it, alot of what we're relying on is someone's (and yes it's often one person) opinion or experience. On the whole they're unlikely to be an expert in the subject (unless you have a profiled set of friends that can provide you with expert insight across your entire consumer need portfolio) and maybe that's fine if you're buying a T-Shirt but actually if you're looking for a SIPP product or a new mortgage you'll still need some advice even if you've had a decent lead.

In terms of the maturity of online ratings and advice models across a whole spectrum of products we're not there yet in the UK and while peer to peer recommendation is becoming more and more important aggregating that opinion in a meaningful way is not there for every sector yet.

In Financial Services we've still got some work to do before we can reach the same sort of user experience as Mint.com in the US. There are some emerging in the UK. Martin Bamford recently announced the imminent arrival of Brilliantwithmoney.co.uk which if it fulfils it's promise will provide a powerful knowledge resource for personal finance, but we're going to have to be a wee bit more patient before we throw all our eggs into the peer to peer basket. We're seeing glimpses of what the future could hold but we're currently at the bottom of what could prove a huge mountain.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

70 is the new 68

2009-07-03T17:46:00.002+01:00

Lord Turner just 4 years ago shocked the nation when he published his report into the state of the UK’s pensions system.

Well I’m actually a bit of a fan of Lord Turners, but it just goes to show that a little Hero worship is a dangerous thing!

For no sooner than he releases it, than this week he announced that he got his sums wrong and that my expected retirement age of 68 is just too much of an aspiration. No for me I must head back to the marketing salt mines for another two years until I’m the ripe old age of 70.

What for me, is the crux of this story is that, on the plus side we are seeing a continual improvement to life expectancy this positive spin is however challenging the retirement income market to almost breaking point.

On an almost on a daily basis we’re told that the funding of retirement will continue to be a major concern for future governments and generations alike. Recently to give some scale to this issue a phrase has been bandied around that means that you should stop worrying about the ‘Credit Crunch’ and start to worry about the ‘Demographic Crunch’.

There was a great article by Dominic Lawson in this weekends Sunday Times that outlined the issues and scale of the problem well.

Anyway I’m off back to the salt mines and will be scrubbing Lord Turner from my Christmas Card list upon the way.

David Mccann
Group Planning Director

Hello. Where’s the customer in CP 09/18?

2009-06-26T16:05:00.000+01:00

So I’m reading this thing, no real surprises (no commission right, clear independent labelling check, no grandfathering makes sense, factoring of fees hmm nightmare etc etc) and I have to keep reminding myself this is for investment/pension business only.

Is it me? But are we giving labels to advisers for one set of products and not for all? Yes I know investment products are the most complex and risky. But as a consumer, most would say getting unbiased mortgage advice is pretty damn important too (most of us think of it as our biggest investment you know). And if commission is still available on other products, then consumers will still think that all advisers get commission won’t they?

And when I decide to have investment/pensions advice, I will get to choose to pay a fee or offset it against my investment (but if a provider thinks this is against my best interest, I may hear back from them)…

Oh and there is moneyguidance, basic advice, restricted advice and independent advice (possibly simplified advice tbc). Hmm…

So why doesn’t the FSA decide to regulate advice or products, why does it have to be a bit of both? I know there are lots of good reasons why it is the way it is, really I do and yet…

Is it me?

Jo Parker
CEO

(Ps: By the way I think it is great for independent advisers and that is great news!)

Happynomics: What makes people happy?

2009-06-17T09:42:00.004+01:00

As anyone who knows me will tell you, this is absolutely my favourite topic, so I’ve read a lot of stuff that relates to it. And I have to say, much of it’s bollocks and doesn’t really help. So I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if you are a tea shop in Harrogate or a large financial institution – happiness can be achieved simply by giving great service.

Happiness is mainly an attitude of gratitude and acceptance. (Think dog). It’s definitely not about money. All the research says, once you’ve reached a salary of £35,000, most people won’t become any happier with more money. (Bollocks!) And just in case you really want to know…happy people are open to change and have a positive outlook on life. They engage in purposeful activities that test their abilities, and develop relationships of respect and closeness. (I read that in a book somewhere).

According to Juliet Schor, Professor of sociology at Boston College, there are huge opportunities in helping people achieve higher levels of happiness. (Look at the growth rate of mentors, life coaches and psychologists in the UK). But most current products and services promise happiness and only deliver short-term satisfaction. Successful brands understand the ‘happiness trend’. They know they can’t sell happiness because true happiness is something people create for themselves. Smart brands choose to be facilitators so people can create their own happiness.

And savvy consumers know the difference between brands that want to sell happiness and brands that want to facilitate happiness. And they will endorse those brands that help them find and create happiness in themselves. As the majority of blogs will show, most are focused on bad customer service experience.

So who is getting it right? Which brands are helping people create happiness, well the obvious one’s are Apple and Innocent, they have a positive outlook and are looking to make the world a better place. But even brands that have got it wrong can start to put things right. Remember Dell Hell? Jeff Jarvis used the BuzzMachine to slam Dell for his horrific customer experience buying a laptop four years ago. This series of posts epitomized growing dissent against the company, and served as a channel to punish the Texas computer maker for bad products and customer service experiences. By listening to their customers and responding to what made them unhappy they have begun to turn it around and now have an incredibly loyal community across the web. At the start of this 49% of blog posts were negative. Today, overall tonality is only 22% negative.

So next time the client provides a brief, try asking this simple question: How is this product or service going to make the audience happy? A damn good service always works for me.

Kirsty Maxey
Managing Director

The changing nature of news aggregation

2009-06-16T23:41:00.007+01:00

If you've been watching the situation unravelling in Iran you'll probably be aware of the almost complete silencing of journalists in the mainstream media. This has seen the mainstream channels turning to the social channels to aggregate and report the news. Both the BBC and Sky are streaming, Youtube, Twitter and Flickr straight onto their site as well as offering opportunities for individuals to upload their videos directly to their sites.

Twitter has been such an essential part of the information flow out of the country that they and their IT vendor NTT took the unprecedented step on Monday of putting off essential site maintenance for a day to ensure that the channel remained open for Iranians reporting on the ground as their blog outlined. Interestingly it emerged today that it was the US state department's intervention that led to the suspension.

What this starts to reveal is the maturing role of citizen journalism and the mainstream media's willingness to use it as a major contributory source within their own reporting. It may lack quality, it may need far greater verification, but in terms of speed and it's ability to reveal the true picture there has yet to be a more effective medium for information flow.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

At last! The best thing I’ve read about the pensions debate for years…

2009-06-15T10:40:00.002+01:00

Just read this and thought it was the best thing I have read about restoring faith in pensions in the UK for ages. Read more here!

Jo Parker
CEO

It’s the future Jim, and some of it we know

2009-06-12T14:49:00.001+01:00

The debate around the impact of the social web on communications continues, and continues, and continues. As a lifelong PR its hard not to feel a little dispirited as those in PR, a bit like lemmings, continue to jump into an abyss of self doubt about whether the sector can rise to meet the digital challenge. Witness the cyclone of print and online comment around the implications of the first new business pitch to be advertised only on twitter.

We need to evolve, no mistake. But, we need to recognise that the good, strong, traditional, PR skills have never been more important than in the age of the social web. As a sector, we know how to generate interesting, engaging, relevant content that people take and make their own. A PR professional should know the right people, who are in the right place at the right time and then be able to mobilise these influencers. This is underpinned by our core skill, identifying and then mitigating reputational risk.

There are of course fundamental differences in how we have to work, not least of which is equipping our team with the skills to distil a vast amount of information on a continuous basis. But, as an industry, the social web presents a massive opportunity to prove the value of PR. The lemmings just need to step away from the edge.

Natalie Orringe
Associate Director - Teamspirit PR

Both sides of the paper

2009-06-02T17:01:00.000+01:00

My mum wasn’t allowed to pursue a career in art. Her father, whose name was Billy Elliott, didn’t think commercial art was a ‘proper’ job. Surprising considering he ran an upmarket grocers in Carlisle and was one of the first people I came across who understood the importance of brands. His meticulous windows proudly showcased point-of-sales for ‘superior’ names like Epicure, Baxter’s and Cross & Blackwell.

The upshot was that my mum went to work in an office until she married and my brother, sister and I came along. Her artistic frustration then expressed itself, helping me express myself; in paint, in pencil and plasticine.

One of my earliest sources of inspiration came from her war-time school art book. Two things struck me about it. The paper was coarse with bits of wood in it, and she’d used both sides of each page. Even pre-pubescent schoolgirls did their bit fighting the Hun by conserving precious materials.

The reason I reminisce was brought about by something our head of digital told me. During 2009, more information will be created and ‘put out there’ to consumers than all the messages created since the dawn of time: which is quite simply mindboggling.

It’s wonderful that today we have so many mediums and opportunities to talk to each other and to consumers. As a communicator it’s great that we no longer have to be held back by a lack of resources or materials. Metaphorically, we no longer have to use ‘both sides of the paper’. And fathers have generally become less restrictive too.

However have we lost something with the ease in which we create messages in the 21st century?

I’m not advocating a return to pre-Guttenberg days, with the only sections of society able to communicate being the wealthy institutions or privileged intelligencia. However, how on earth are our messages going to stand out in such an ocean of information?

I believe the answer lies in imagination, craft and ingenuity, and in taking the time and consideration to apply them properly. One of the greatest gifts digital messaging has given us is time. Yet how often is it squandered? Why change things at the last minute just because we can? Have we lost the ability to commit to a message and design before the night before the presentation?

Like most creative people of my generation Bill Bernbach is a hero. This is one of his many insights to the creative person: “…every idea, every word he puts down, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he takes makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product advantage he has decided he must convey.”

In other words every detail is a precious commodity. Let’s use them wisely, just like they did with paper in 1939.

Geoff Turner
Executive Creative Director

Nationwide saves the dinner party from extinction

2009-05-29T11:43:00.002+01:00

There was a gasp of appreciation and excitement this morning from the UK’s middling classes as the realisation that at last, we’ll have something to talk about at dinner!

For the past 12 months up and down the land at the gatherings of suburbanites, around the offerings of Marks and Spencer’s or Waitrose people have been left almost dumbstruck due to the rapid decline in house prices.

Without the obligatory chatter about how much our house or property portfolio was worth, compared to this time last year, last month, week, or hour, candle lit suppers had lost their sparkle. We were for the longest time, left with conversations based upon nothing other than our inability to fathom just how a mortgage backed security that was used to leverage or offset a derivate risk in the US, could cause RBS to loose huge value from its off balance sheet lending, which then lead to the downfall of dear old Bradford and Bingley. This less than riveting chit chat has led to less and less invitations to come and dine at number 74 Acacia or indeed Blossom Avenue and the dinner party was put well and truly on the endangered species list.

Well good news, we can all rest assured that that our usual keeping up with the Jonse’s discourse is likely to return any time soon thanks to Nationwide’s announcement that house prices are back on the up.

Phew! I’ll put the Mateus Rose on ice and see if the Hyacinth is available.

David McCann
Planning Director

FS has got talent

2009-05-27T08:49:00.001+01:00

Inspired by my unfortunate relapse into reality TV viewing this week, I find myself wondering if the Britain’s Got Talent format would work to engage the great British Public with their finances? An entertaining proposition if ever there was one. Imagine, dancing father and son intermediaries; a troop of acrobatic mortgage brokers; a singing bank manager. Oh yeah, we’ve had that one already. Anyway, you get the picture.

These days it’s all about people power. It’s within everyone to know what they want or need, they just have to be excited, inspired and rewarded in order to become engaged.

So come on, let’s make it interesting! Creating entertaining communication with a great story at its heart is the place to start. Giving the audience an opportunity to tell us what they think is the way forward. And listening to them when they are giving us the answers is the future. After all, a great performance isn’t the only way to get your audience’s attention, (but of course, it’s a great way to start).

Montse Tojeiro
Client Service Director

The power of a good story

2009-05-21T10:09:00.003+01:00

So the Telegraph has gained 600,000 new readers because of the MP’s expenses scoop. What’s more astonishing is that it received a whopping 13 million web page views on the subject. This has now cemented telegraph.co.uk as the number one newspaper website, overtaking the Guardian.

Being in PR, I have lost count of (but am still angered by) those that suggest social media and, in particular, blogging will lead to the demise of traditional media. I agree that the days of print might be numbered but the market for quality journalism has never been stronger.

Just as the VCR was hyped as a major threat to cinemas, yet drove interest in film and ultimately cinema visitor numbers, so consumption of information and opinion (from any source) has led to an increase in demand for traditional media, albeit online.

But the Telegraph hasn’t just attracted its seven million plus unique users by being in the right place at the right time. It truly understands the dynamic of the social web and embraces rather than competes with bloggers and tweeters. Online editorial is driven by trending topics of the day, therefore benefiting SEO (a third of all visitors come from search engines), the newsroom is structured around delivering across multiple media and tools like Digg and Twitterfall are embraced. Most importantly, The Telegraph is not afraid to let go of its brand a little – users can interact with and build content online and can personalise their experience.

So what next? News Corp has recently gone public about its intentions to charge for online content and as offline readers decline this is likely to be a trend others will follow. But how to strike the balance between keeping those user numbers up (and ad revenue) while still monetizing content. I would suggest looking to itunes for inspiration: a single user experience no matter what the music or record company, easy to use and based on micropayments. Although to make it work for media I suspect we will be talking nanopayments instead.

Scott Learmouth
Managing Director - Teamspirit PR

How mobile are you?

2009-05-21T10:03:00.002+01:00

Interesting to see the new website for mobank offering us the ability to pay securely by our mobile for a variety of things, from flowers to lunch - the ultimate convenience. Watch others follow (how will credit card companies respond especially with the new pay and wave technology?) With the widespread adoption of Smartphones the ability to manage our investments on the move is taking huge leaps forward. Exciting times!

Jo Parker
CEO

Should Financial Services brands be engaged on the social web?

2009-05-14T09:48:00.004+01:00

The answer to the above is yes of course they should be. The more pertinent question is how should they be engaged? In an environment where trust in Financial Services brands has all but disappeared and Martin Lewis and Robert Peston have become the go to sources of advice for consumers it's going to be difficult to jump feet first into social media, an environment where trust is the key currency.

So, what should Financial Services brands be doing? Well at an absolute basic level there should be a core centralised listening strategy. If you're not monitoring what's being said, where it's being talked about and who's shaping the discussion across the whole of the social web (whatever that is) then you can't hope to reach engagement. That means developing a set of tools of which there are a multitude and analysis of the output tools that informs all the functions internally that the conversations touch.

Once that's done you can start to filter the conversations to understand what's really important and what can be realistically ignored for now.

Then it comes down to basic marketing and PR principles. Identify the content that will be of interest, arm the right set of people internally to use that content. Frame the message in a way that is helpful and concentrate on the message not the medium. Once that's done you can engage.

A classic recent example of how to engage positively and helpfully was Norwich Union's engagement with Ade Bridgewater on Twitter. Ade a journalist and influential twitter user had had a terrible experience with a Norwich Union customer care call and decided to really take them to the cleaners through his Twitter profile. However, Norwich Union were listening, they got in contact with him directly and put him in touch with the relevant department to sort out his issues. As a result he had nothing but good things to say on his profile thereafter. Job done.

Engagement has to be approached differently. Think of it as turning the sales process on it's head. You do all the aftersales first and then you can get to a sale sometime in the future. If a brand is thinking of engaging it has to be helpful, useful, valuable, trustworthy, an ally and a facilitator to users whether they are conducting a personal or a business transaction. Until you are all those things and you are conducting all of those functions where users are, you can't expect people to start trusting you.

Once they do begin to trust you though you can think about developing social destination points, whether that be a Facebook group or a Twitter brand embassy. After all you've put in the work to earn the right to be there and people will eventually come to you as long as you continue to be an advisory centre rather than a sales channel.

In short social media engagement should happen in five stages:

1. Assess
Listen to the conversation – identify where the chat is
Identify what you hold internally that would be useful for an external audience

2. Filter
Where’s the influence? – don’t worry about every single comment or post
What’s the real sentiment? – how is it weighted?

3. Generate
What does your audience want to be hearing?
Need to be developing editorial content that is engaging

4. Engage
At all multi-layered customer touch points
Focus on message not medium – go to your audiences and build trust first

5. Distribute
Finally become a destination point
Become an enabler for conversations that enhance reputation
Build brand embassies

Get all this right and you can create huge equity as we move onwards towards an era of social commerce.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

NISA news

2009-05-13T14:27:00.000+01:00

There’s been much talk of greenshoots this week, especially from the European Central Bank (although Mervyn King has just sought to play down widespread talk of 'green shoots' and cautioned that the outlook for the UK economy remains uncertain). But here is some interesting, positive news. According to IMA stats the 2008/09 ISA season saw net inflows of £529.1 million, 74% more than the previous year’s inflow of £303.8 million (and yes that’s equity ISAs rather than cash ISAs). But as Meg said last year, should we be worried that given the lack of attractive saving alternatives more money is being ploughed into equities?

Jo Parker
CEO

The signs aren’t good

2009-05-11T14:25:00.002+01:00

Redundancies for the three months to February 2009 were 270,000 - up 45,000 over the quarter and up 162,000 over the year. This is the highest figure since comparable records began in 1995.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted by 1.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2009. Hotels, restaurants, transport, storage and business services all fell in terms of output in the 3 months to February this year.

And yet I look at my share portfolio and it has risen – significantly - in recent weeks. April was the best month for the FTSE 100 in six years, and the media are reporting that we are now officially in a bull market having risen more than 20% from the recent lows in March.

All of which leads me to one question. Are we experiencing a ‘W’, a ‘U’, a ‘V’ or even an ‘L?’ Are we positively talking our way out of things or is the widely derided ‘global rescue package’ actually working? Should I capitalise on my short-term gains and hope the markets plummet over the summer, or should I wait and keep my fingers crossed that stocks keep slowly rising back up?

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter that much – this is just a bit of fun for me. But for the estimated 1 million Britons that are due to retire this year, the answer to this question has a profound impact on the rest of their lives. The new guidance and information opportunities suggested as part of the Thorenson Review will help. But perhaps our thinking should be more profound than this. Perhaps we should stop thinking about equities being the investment vehicle for mainstream retail products and look to alternatives?

Meg Steele
Client Services Director

Another retailer banking on finance in the future

2009-05-05T09:36:00.003+01:00

Following on from our previous piece and the obvious move of Tesco to become a fully regulated bank after a decade of white labelling other companies products. We now hear that another High Street retailer is likely to follow suit.

Boots the high street peddler of cough syrup, toothbrushes and beauty products has announced it’s considering a regulatory status and selling personal banking products throughout it’s 2600 chemists and retail stores.

This begs the question just why do these business believe that they have the credibility, and what it takes to offer an overpriced current account and a second rate customer experience!

Well in fact they don’t, what they do have however, is an understanding of the imperatives that drive commodity purchases and a depth of knowledge about creating a great customer experience. That and of course they have the experience of using them in both the real and virtual world.

For many years Financial Service brands have used affinity deals with retailers and other brands in their pursuit of new customers, mainly because they found it difficult to travel across the emotional gap between their businesses and what their prospects valued and desired.

What they didn’t realise in undertaking this strategy is that in so doing they transferred all of their expertise, knowledge and credibility to their affinity partners, who while happy in the short term to share revenue streams, ultimately gained a longer term prize of being recognised as a capable financial provider.

This of course has all come at a time when consumer trust and belief in the financial institutions they grew up with has been shaken to the core, with the nationalisation and collapse of the Banking sector.

So while the retailers of today who are looking at the banks of tomorrow should have a lasting gratitude to organisations such as MBNA. Perhaps it’s time for the Banks of today to really sit up and take notice of what will become of retail in the future.

Ps. You might also find it slightly ironic that MBNA was set up in a Newark, Delaware supermarket, just goes to prove, what goes around, comes around.

David McCann
Planning Director

Martin Lewis more popular than Barrack Obama

2009-04-23T09:43:00.006+01:00

Here's a sobering thought. Google trends shows that more people in the UK are searching out Martin Lewis than Obama with the exception of two brief moments in time!

[Click on the image to expand]

Watch out - here come the retailers!

2009-04-03T13:48:00.003+01:00

As predicted at the beginning on 4 March (Who will eat the banks’ lunch) the retailers will fill the vacuum left by the big banks and building societies.

Did you see Tesco is launching 30 in-store banks by the end of the year under the brand name of Tesco Bank as part of the expansion of its financial services operation?

The supermarket, which has been trialing the concept in Glasgow since 2006, will use the banks to offer insurance, savings and credit card products from Tesco Personal Finance (TPF). Tesco is also planning to launch a current account within the next two years while mortgages are also being considered. Interesting times don’t you think?

Jo Parker
CEO

What price principles?

2009-03-20T12:09:00.007Z

As recession hits, how much are people prepared to pay over the odds for their principles?

- Total organic sales fell by 11% in December 2008

- Tracker funds under management in the fourth quarter of 2008 were £19.8bn, down 5 per cent on £20.9bn in the third quarter of 2008, while Ethical funds under management in the fourth quarter of 2008 were £4.4bn, down 7 per cent on the previous quarter.

It will be interesting to watch consumer behaviour over the next 12 months and see if the saying ‘a principle is not a principle until it’s cost you something’ holds true.

Jim Poulter
Client Services Director

You don’t know me!

2009-03-19T12:01:00.003Z

I was reading blog entries by Nigel Hollis, Chief Global Analyst for Millward Brown, one of the world’s leading research companies today.

Two entries struck me and started me thinking. One was about the all pervading (and intrusive?) Facebook. Mr Hollis was saying that most analysts believe Facebook will started monetizing data, using it to target advertising.

So my status notes I am looking forward to my trip to Nepal, and Facebook delivers me Travel Insurance ads. Handy for me, great for advertisers and even better for Facebook. A truly targeted piece of advertising. Brilliant – probably a little irritating after a while and even bordering on slightly creepy, but brilliant nonetheless.

Two weeks earlier Hollis discussed the importance of locally applicable retail, citing the FT article focusing on how the Shanghai launch of Marks and Spencer had not gone according to plan in spite of 20 years experience trading in nearby Hong Kong.

So, what can we gain from this? That some have grasped that what works in one region often fails in another…and that those who want to make a success need to start targeting (and therefore making more cost effective) their communications.

As the world supposedly becomes more global and uniform, it still seems to amaze some that highly targeted advertising, messaging and positioning is important.

Love may be the global language, but communication is by nature essentially local.

James Maxwell
Copywriter

Has Trust Gone Bust?

2009-03-18T13:23:00.005Z

Opinion Leader Research are hosting a debate tomorrow night with this title and in advance I was mulling this over and the age old debate about trust (or lack of it) in financial services. You know how it goes. "How can we rebuild trust after the Equitable debacle, endowment shortfalls, dropping pension values, state run banks and large bonuses..?"

Well the answer is clear, we can't. Trust has gone bust, but not just in financial services. That's because in society we don't trust like we used to. We question governments, businesses, Drs - we check out what we are told on the internet and we make our own decisions. The only person we really, truly, trust these days is ourselves.

So, let's stop this debate once and for all. The question we really need to focus on is “How do we engage better with the Recommendation Generation?"

Jo Parker
CEO

So, what next?

2009-03-17T09:48:00.001Z

In February last year I met with an IFA to discuss my financial situation. I had a lump sum I wanted to invest and wanted some professional advice. During the course of his visit he stated:

1) That he expected the FTSE to close the year at 7,200 pts.
2) That property was still showing significant signs of growth with no real evidence that it was about to drop.

Now luckily, through sheer inertia I didn't take up any of his advice and stuck the lot across two high interest savings accounts while I figured out what next?

What next was I sat down 13 months later - last night to be precise - to decide what to do with the money that's now languishing accruing 4 pts less interest than when I opened the accounts a year ago. My wife and I spent 2 hours discussing our next move - we decided agaist an IFA - we decided against taking advice from my brother-in-law (a wealth manager) - we decided against buying property, because who knows.

We ended up deciding to go to the Caribbean at Christmas, frankly there appear to be so few options out there at the moment you might as well spend it, it's devaluing anyway. Any better options will be considered and probably disregarded.

Crispin Heath
Head of Digital

How will we fund our retirement now?

2009-03-06T12:20:00.002Z

The EU has announced today that compulsory retirement at 65 is NOT unlawful. This could turn into a UK law that is both short sighted and out of touch. Given that people’s pensions are insufficient (or even non-existent), the cost of living keeps on rising, and we’re living longer, why should those that are healthy and happy to work beyond the age of 65 not be able to do so? The Government’s continued and sensible policy of self-funding our retirement is fine. But it’s far too late for people in their 60s to make a significant difference to the return on their investments and secure themselves a prosperous retirement.

Either people are given the guarantee of a financially secure retirement (not going to happen any time soon), or they are allowed to continue to earn a wage if they choose to do so. Please don’t completely lose sight of the short term picture, and please help people to help themselves.

Montse Tojeiro

Who will eat the banks’ lunch?

2009-03-04T14:08:00.002Z

Interesting to read this week that Tesco Personal Finance reported a near doubling of the amount of money deposited with them during the past six months. Tesco Personal Finance said more accounts were opened with them during December alone than in the whole of 2007, boosting their saver numbers up to around 500,000.They credited the strong flow of funds during the month to a particular savings account which was offered for a limited time and attracted "tens of thousands of savers". Tesco already offers savings products, loans and insurance and have plans to offer a full banking service, including current accounts and mortgages. Surveys had previously shown that consumers trusted supermarkets more than they trusted banks, even before the current financial crisis. 500,000 accounts may seem small fry, but with the chance to offer a retail experience very different to the banks and a brand synonymous with value for money, watch this space!

Jo Parker

In the shoes of income seekers

2009-03-02T15:07:00.000Z

Having just spent a weekend looking at income options with my retired Mum who hasn’t a pension to fall back on – I have realised that the search for income when you are in your 70s is very stressful indeed. Firstly if, like my Mum, you don’t have a pc you have to go round to different banks and building societies by foot – and then be ‘sold to’ at each visit. You are probably not being given the best or latest deals either – so you really are e-excluded.

You are often given contradictory information – one person told her that annuity rates were the best they have been for ages – yet in the papers there has been wide coverage about how annuity rates are low.

She was told that although interest rates were the lowest they had been well since records began, that she should guard savings against inflation coming back in 3 years.

She doesn’t understand that some advisers are qualified to tell her about some products and not all (such as Lifetime Mortgages).

She was also told about a capital guaranteed product linked to the FTSE 100 available from a building society – but then told that if the asset manager who was offering it went under, she would loose any money over the £50,000 compensation amount. So it feels like no guarantee at all from where she is sitting.

And when you are in your mid 70s you want security. You don’t want to have to review your money every 6 months and trek around finding the best deal (she thinks she can’t afford an IFA by the way). In fact she feels that when things should be getting simpler and easier, her financial situation and the options available to her have never been more complex. And she is right. It is a minefield and I can tell you I am not looking forward to having to do this when I am retired - and I know a thing or two about this stuff!

Mortgages

2009-02-24T12:23:00.000Z

So, after many an internal battle, I have decided that the current housing market presents such an opportunity that I would be a fool to consider travelling over buying a house. (A dilemma faced by many of my peers).

Whether the market recovers to the fully (over?) inflated price it stood at last September (+10% on today’s figures) or whether there it will rise to a level that is more realistic isn’t too much of an issue at present. The real point to making the decision is that the market continues to fall to a level where I (along with my current housemate) might be able to enter in to joint ownership of a house that is comfortable both in terms of size and repayments. With tracker rates out there beginning at 3.88% we would be fools not to… But, (and as you an see that is a “but” with a capital “B”!) where on earth are we going to find the 40% deposit that is necessary to secure this rate? With both of us being only 18 months out of university, and despite both being in well paid employment, there is no way we will be able to find the £79,200 (based on average house price of £198,000) to take advantage of this. Unfortunately, it seems that those who would truly benefit and are willing to take advantage of the current market simply don’t have the finances to get started. Indeed, I doubt any first-time-buyer does. And as long as that trend continues, I’ll be keeping my passport valid and my eye on airline costs.

Diane Gracie
Project Manager

40 years to retirement

2009-02-20T15:33:00.004Z

As a young man, I like to think that the fact I have been making a contribution to my pension from the moment I was able is a savvy move. When I started I ticked the “high-risk” box for my investments, which, considering I have at least 40 years ahead of me before I can retire, was a savvy move. This was, however, in March 2008… and I cant help but wonder where my pension might be now (I am waiting for my latest password to come through so that I can evaluate the performance). While waiting for access, I cant help but wonder, just how “high-risk” my pot is…. I imagine now, in light of all that has happened it is actually relatively low-risk (as everything is). But for someone with at least 40 years of investment ahead of them, should I be taking my pot into my own hands and begin to look at heavier equity investment? After all, equities are bound to recover in the next 40 years… which means I have plenty of time to switch my investments to safer options at a later date.

The question is, while an opportunity it may be, is such a volatile economic climate the appropriate stage for my first foray into investment management? I will keep you posted (so be sure to check back when I retire!)

Nick Tuckwood
Project Manager

McFall shows his true colours

2009-02-18T10:08:00.002Z

After inflicting his derision on an undeserving Governor of the Bank of England we waited with baited breath for John McFall’s outpouring of pure venom on the leaders of the UK Banking community.

Instead we saw his most gentle and self effacing treatment of these unqualified, overpromoted destroyers of a once proud financial industry. McFall failed, once again, to identify the difference between a Bank and a Banker.

Within a day or so he and the "select" committee were to confront, the Prime Minister, and this time we witnessed sycophantic verbal backslapping all witnessed by an apparently unbelieving Chancellor of our Exchequer.

In all of these encounters no-one reflected even casually on the fact that our Banking Industry was and still is in the hands of people who have no qualifications such as Finance of Foreign Trade, Practice of Banking, Monetary Theory and Practice, Law Relating to Banking or Accountancy.

Media, press, radio and television commentators have all fallen into the same trap, led by Robert Peston and Jeremy Paxman. They've all jumped onto the bandwagon and have done as much damage as possible to a Banking Industry that was once led by truly qualified professional people and was the envy of the commercial world.

John Maxey
(Ex Bank Manager, Nat West)

Interesting recession initiatives are food for thought

2009-02-17T12:43:00.004Z

Have you seen that Barclaycard has cut interest rates for those struggling with finances and will not contact late payers for up to two months, as long as they are actively working to sort out their financial difficulties? And TUI has announced that Thomson and First Choice will offer redundancy cover on holidays and flights? TalkTalk has also launched the Emergency Plan which waives the £6.49 monthly charge for Internet and phone access.

The question is that when it comes to insurance or savings or pensions are we doing enough to help customers manage and keep covered? Simple stripped down products, premium holidays at no charge so people can keep covered or saving could be really useful and be seen as truly Treating Customers Fairly. Come on, let’s think like retailers!

Jo Parker
Chief Executive

It’s time to move away from relying on consumer PR surveys

2009-02-16T14:15:00.001Z

It wasn’t long ago that financial services companies weren’t using consumer research to get their brands talked about in the news sections of national newspapers. Now there isn’t a day gone by, where there isn’t another survey or index covering a variety of topics - from telling us how confident we are about saving (or not), to how many of us are travelling abroad this year (or not). I am not saying that there isn’t a place for this, but in these difficult times, where trust in our sector is at an all time low, we need to find bigger platforms, create adult debates which will give longevity to a brands point of view, rather than the poppy, one-hit wonders these surveys can be. It’s about bringing public affairs skills to play with a keen sense of what consumers are interested in. In my view that’s the model of good PR in these times.

Jo Parker
Chief Executive

Stopping recession becoming a depression

2009-02-06T11:37:00.005Z

At an MGGB dinner on Wednesday night Lord Mandelson talked about stopping ‘the recession moving to a depression’ and how confidence and tone are critical.

Well, clearly major structural issues are affecting our economy (such as the lack of credit insurance, or support for our knowledge and creative industries and the split between private taxation and public spending – I could go on but won’t rant) and these fundamental issues must be addressed.

However, I do think that from a communications point of view, tone is critical in the current volatile times. 2008 was a record breaking year for London theatre with 14 million people going to visit a play or musical, resulting in £480m of ticket sales. Hollywood blossomed in the Great Depression. So let’s not forget consumers need positive, confident communications that entertain, not to hear a replay the issues and difficulties they are facing. Do we need to really tell them they need to save more for their retirement or that they could spend as long in retirement as they did in work? Rather let’s focus on practical and positive solutions!

Jo Parker
Chief Executive

Cheap money

2008-06-25T14:47:00.002+01:00

Pete

Now would it be too cynical to question does Barclays really need the £4.5bn it is about to raise or is it just taking advantage of the current climate?

It's quiet in here

2008-06-05T17:25:00.002+01:00

Pete

I often make a real song and dance about the amount of advertising carried by the adviser facing sites i.e there's too much on every page.

However a quick trip to Mortgage Strategy today was akin to walking through a wild west town with the tumbleweeds blowing down the middle.

Once we see the advertising return we'll know things are OK again. Then I can start complaining again.

Credit crunch hits home

2008-05-20T09:33:00.002+01:00

Pete

It's a survey (read PR release) but one that caught my eye - apparently the credit crunch is impacting on our love lives:

Divorce rates are predicted to rise
More arguments at home due to financial pressures
Loss of libido due to worry
Worries cause people to spend less time communicating with their partners

So perhaps we can 'love' our way through this difficult period? I'm prepared to do my bit, are you?

What makes you feel wealthier?

2008-05-19T09:56:00.002+01:00

Jo M

We've just completed some research for one of our clients on what makes for a wealthier future.

I wanted to share with you the five key things that make people feel wealthier:

Owning their home outright (55%)
Owning a second home (44%)
Travelling first class (29%)
Driving a car worth over £50,000 (28%)
Owning an expensive ‘toy’ e.g. a boat or plane (22%)

That's your birthday lists all sorted then.

Fame at last

2008-05-15T09:07:00.004+01:00

Pete

Thanks to those nice people at New Media Age for printing my letter in today's issue.

I was was responding to one of those 'I'd like to make a very valid point about X oh and I just happen to be the person who sells the product or service that answers that problem' type letter.

In this case it was all about how much better widgets were in delivering content than email due to speed, personalisation and the ability of users to pull in content of interest to them.

My point, in response to the above, was that the technology of delivering information to a user (push or pull) is not the key issue but that the content was the most vital element. I can continue to embrace the latest super widget technology but if I havent addressed the quality of my content it is pointless.

I feel better for getting that off my chest. Plus getting my photo in the magazine makes my mum proud and that's a nice thing.

Interesting insight into AGM's

2008-05-14T09:35:00.002+01:00

Pete

Quite an interesting article via thisismoney where their reporters attend a number of AGM's (honestly it is quite interesting) and report on Darlington Building Society, Yorkshire Building Society and the the Catholic Building Society.

It's very interesting to note the different ways each organisation manages it's AGM from a 'secret society' feel (a members words) to wine and cheese being laid on.

Yahoo & Google

2008-05-13T09:49:00.002+01:00

Pete

There has been lots of concern voiced about Google and Yahoo 'moving closer together' following the aborted Microsoft takeover - initially discussing Yahoo embracing Google's search technology and adwords product.

What's unusual is some of the specific groups in the US who have written to the Justice Department to complain about the power of the two companies combined - my favourites were League of Rural Voters and the Corn Growers Association.

Wow - who knew Google had it in for farmers?

Are you high net worth?

2008-05-09T08:59:00.003+01:00

Pete

Then forget Ebay - you need MillionaireBay a site catering to the needs of the super wealthy. With a strapline of 'acquire what you desire' the site offers products from supercars to property to jewellery.

However unlike the typical starting bids in pennies on Ebay most of the starting bids here start in the tens of thousands.

Now I am happy to boast when I get a good deal on Ebay but will the customers on MillionaireBay to happy that the rest of the set know just how much they paid for something?

PS I did do some real digging and it does seem genuine!

shhh turn the volume down

2008-05-07T11:49:00.003+01:00

Pete

That long time bug bear of TV viewers, the volume of tv adverts, is finally to be addressed.

This summer new regulations come into force that set out that adverts must not be "excessively noisy or strident". I like the word strident - it sounds very official - def: making or having a harsh sound; grating; creaking.

Wow maybe now TV ads will need to deliver content that's of interest to the viewer rather than just shouting at them.

Bank holiday spending

2008-05-06T09:45:00.002+01:00

Pete

Apparently prior to 1834 the Bank of England recognised 33 saints days and religious festivals - now that sounds like one of the best decisions they ever made.

Wii Fit

2008-05-02T11:00:00.002+01:00

Pete

Yes it's absolutely nothing to do with financial services but if you, like me, have been searching high and low for a Wii Fit board (as a present honestly) then this site should be on your favourite's:

Wii Consoles

It will launch a pop up window to tell you when new stock has been detected. Now that's a very basic bit of functionality but how good would it be, given the current mortgage market, to offer the same service to announce new rates?

Yey a web site is born

2008-05-01T09:16:00.002+01:00

Pete

It's always a nice morning when a clients web site launches as planned and today is a very lovely morning as we celebrate the launch of the Independent Women website.

Independent Women was Scotland's first IFA firm dedicated to offering friendly, professional financial advice for women and set up by Lesley Collins in 1997.

So here's to Lesley, Kate, Jennifer and the team and plenty of unique users, page views and return visits.

Wish me luck

2008-04-29T11:58:00.003+01:00

Pete

While I wait to find someone who will sell me a Wii fit board I'm going to check out how well the Wii hooks up to the BBC iPlayer.

However the very first thing I am going to do is actually check out the speed of my broadband service - if it really is running at 8Mb you can call me Susan.

Virtual silence

2008-04-29T11:48:00.002+01:00

Pete

Wow - the silence is deafening.

It's been at least four weeks now since I read anything about Second Life. Has the world come to its senses?

Nope - its now just focusing on Twitter, a form of micro blogging, using the 160 characters allowed within an SMS message to update your friends on 'What are you doing'.

It's been in the press and even on Radio 4 as Gordon Brown is now 'twittering' - which means one of his juniors is doing it.

It's hard to see the business model behind Twitter and unless they have discovered a way to run a business without a revenue stream I can't see how they survive beyond their first round of funding.

It's quirky, its new(ish), its oh so web 2.0 but is it a business?

When choice is no choice at all

2008-04-28T10:19:00.000+01:00

Jo Parker

OK time to talk about something else other than the credit crunch.

Something that is a constant theme for our sector and that is the wrestle the industry has between offering simple products on one hand vs products that offer wide choice and flexibility.

The basic rule seems to be that the wealthier the audience you are targeting, and especially if you are distributing products via IFAs, the more choice and flexibility you should offer, so a you can tailor a solution to the consumer’s needs.

It makes a lot of sense on the face of it.

But given that there are more funds in the UK than quoted companies and a recent product spec I read had a mind boggling 23 choices/options, I wonder if this is just a bit lazy? That companies are trying to be all things to all people?

Put yourself in the shoes of the adviser or end client and this amount of choice can be very off-putting.

Reading Goldstein, Martin and Galdini’s book ‘Yes!’ they make this point well, citing the example of Procter & Gamble who offer a huge range of products. When P&G reduced the number of versions of Head and Shoulders from 26 to ‘only’ 15 they saw a 10% increase in sales.

So (and back of course) to the current market context, when we all want to be very clear about what we are purchasing and how our money is invested, reducing choices and simplifying products and ranges (as some asset managers are already doing this week), maybe a very wise course of action.

Ad overload

2008-04-24T14:56:00.002+01:00

Pete

And congratulations go to IFAonline who manage to cram 13 banner ads into a single page.

Nice work guys - who needs content after all?

Income multiplier only 4.5x

2008-04-24T13:30:00.002+01:00

Pete

The Yorkshire Building Society has cut its income multiplier from 5x to 4.5x as a reaction to the current credit crisis.

So that would take someone on £50k from being able to borrow £250k to £225k - is that really that significant a drop?

Happy birthday to us

2008-04-21T12:28:00.006+01:00

Pete

Last week Teamspirit became a teenager and celebrated its 13th birthday aboard a boat on the Thames (all with a pirate theme).

If you've never tried one of the boat trips up and down the Thames then do - it's a great way to see London from a different angle.

It's a thought

2008-04-16T17:32:00.001+01:00

Pete

Interesting post on thisislondon following the story that arrangement fee's have doubled over the last year:

'What if everybody simultaneously agreed not to make any more mortgage payments? Can we end this system once and for all?'

- Neil, London, UK

HSBC mortgage offer

2008-04-14T10:50:00.003+01:00

Pete

I though I would go and try out the new remortgage calculator HSBC have on their homepage given their offer to match the fixed rates of customers whose mortgages were coming out of a fixed term.

It's a nice simple calculator but a few things do pop up:

1. The highest rate they will match is 5.83% (yet there is no mention of a higher level cap in the terms)
2. Max loan is £250,000
3. Max 80% LTV

So playing around I have been trying to secure the biggest arrangement fee possible and the 'worst' combination is 4.45% and loan of £250k which gets you an arrangement fee of £4099.

Ouch.

New media jobs await...

2008-04-10T09:12:00.003+01:00

Pete

As we are winning more and more digital business (hooray) we are expanding our team and I thought I'd advertise the roles here on our blog. So feel free to get in touch if either of the following roles appeals:

Senior flash programmer - 3-5 years with actionscript. Very involved role from working with creative team on initial ideas to producing rich media advertising, flash presentations, flash micro sites and getting involved in developments for mobile, social network widgets etc

Digital Project Director - 3 years+ ideally within a digital agency or client side, experience of most aspects of digital marketing from email to banners to web sites to mobile. Working across a range of clients you'll need to balance digital skills with client skills.

You can email us via the contact page on our web site www.teamspirit.uk.com

Unbias media

2008-04-09T16:02:00.002+01:00

Pete

Today's poll on thisislondon.co.uk is 'Are Mortgage lenders fleecing clients?'

Erm thats not a leading question is it?

Too good to be true?

2008-04-09T10:25:00.002+01:00

Pete

HSBC has made a major move in the mortgage market by offering to match the fixed rates for homeowners who's deals are coming to an end.

Sketchy details on the 'conditions' but bold nonetheless.

Open for business

2008-04-03T13:13:00.002+01:00

Pete

As the Co-Op Bank withdraws its best two year fixed rate mortgages from the market today it seems that the best marketing message you can have at the moment is just being open for business.

$26bn in two years

2008-04-01T12:25:00.002+01:00

Pete

So UBS have now written off $26bn since 2007 following their latest annoucement.

Losing millions doesn't seem as bad anymore does it?

What credit crunch?

2008-03-28T08:55:00.002Z

Pete

Having attended a meeting in glamorous Canary Wharf on Wednesday it was a little surprising to see every bar full to the brim at 6pm.

So is it a case of drinking to forget?

Too long...

2008-03-27T10:44:00.002Z

Pete

Looking at moneymarketing and Ifaonline recently I noticed that some advertisers are running banners that take close to 20 seconds before they get to their main selling point.

While its nice, visually, to see such flowing creative it does seem we are becoming quite self indulgent. Typically a visit is task driven and average dwell time on pages is never very long.

There's a role for lovely branding ads that entertain and then inform but on the whole the response ads need to be short and sweet.