Bank of America’s Digital Awakening
Traditionally, financial services firms have not been known as marketing vanguards, but in recent years, banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies have made significant strides. In large part, they have caught up with their consumer products brethren and now actively use every medium available to promote their financial products. Increasingly, these firms are becoming more aggressive with digital media. In a previous post, I mentioned E*TRADE as an example of a financial services firm that has leveraged its television ads featuring babies into a range of online promotion, including YouTube videos and electronic “Baby Mail.”
So it is interesting that Bank of America revealed at the Advertising Age Digital Conference it will be reducing its spending on traditional television and print advertising and, instead, doubling its digital spending. Bank of America is the country’s second largest bank, so the news is not inconsequential. Banks are notorious for moving in a herd. Other banks will surely pay close attention to Bank of America’s digital adventures and follow closely in its footsteps.
Perhaps more interesting than the announcement itself, though, is how Bank of America plans to use digital media. While the bank could easily dump tons of money into digital advertising, it is taking an alternate route. Claire Huang, Head of Marketing for Bank of America’s Global Wealth & Investment Management division, told the audience at the Advertising Age Digital Conference that:
“We’re realizing that digital not only allows you to provide information, you have real, live connections. It’s not just a flat little square box you have two seconds to look at. … We’re actually making our own content because we have content experts.”
AdAge adds that Bank of America is:
“Improving its digital presence by increasing internal efforts, such as new texting tools, Twitter tools and self-produced webcasts, rather than on more digital ad spending. … As an example Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit recently hired Charlie Gibson to talk on a panel about retirement planning that was webcast from the Merrill Lynch site.”
Bank of America’s digital awakening may not be earth-shaking to online marketers who will smile knowingly at the mention of the word “content.” This, after all, is the modern day core value proposition of the Internet. The Internet has flattened access to information. That’s why the quality of information is so critical.
In fact, the value of useful and proprietary information can be a competitive factor in differentiating one marketer from another. Whether it’s through corporate websites, microsites, blogs, webcasts, digital videos, or via social media, distributing valuable content – and even better, original valuable content – is the road to grabbing and holding onto an online consumer and getting that consumer engaged in a “live connection,” as Claire Huang calls it.
I applaud Bank of America for recognizing the value of content, and for betting its marketing dollars on that content. Here’s hoping that lots more financial services organizations, and other marketers, will take this as a call to arms and offer up their own original, valuable content. Such a development could do nothing but make the online world a better place for all of us.
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