This presentation was delivered on April 29th 2014 to an audience of financial services organizations at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong. It outlines why the financial services sector has been a social media late-bloomer, how it can get with the digital program, and things to think about in the design of their social business (as viewed through the prism of marketing communications).

1. Who cares about social media?
Bob Pickard | Asia-Pacific Chairman | Hong Kong | 2014.04.29

2. § Executives who don’t want to be left behind
§ Customers who want a relationship with the brand
§ Prospects who are researching which firm to choose
§ Investors deciding whether to double-down or sell
§ Analysts who want fresh streams of new content
§ Media looking for data and easy turnkey story angles
§ Employees who like to share their working lives
§ Talent deciding whether to join – and if you ‘get it’
§ Google deciding where to rank you
These people care…
2

3. Let’s look at the numbers
3

4. 44

5. 55

6. 66

7. § A risk-averse conservative mindset prevails
§ Legal cautions have had a dampening effect
§ Executive ‘face’ issues; fear of making mistakes
§ Bureaucratic inertia abounds
§ Regulatory constraints a reality and an excuse
§ Legacy technology like Internet 1.0 (‘but we already
have a website!’)
§ The mistaken belief that social networks are just for
brand marketing
Financial services slow on social
7

8. Fear of losing control
8
¨ “The financial services industry has largely shied away
from participating in social media for fear of losing
control of its messaging, or inadvertently violating
compliance regulations, or both. As a result, within
firms the use of social media channels is often
blocked, and tepid or less-than-timely messaging is
squeezed through a bottleneck of highly controlled
manual supervision.”
¨ - IBM

9. MONOLOGUE
“They can’t hear
me and I feel
insignificant”
“They must
listen and I will
be heard”
PASSIVE CON-SUMERS
DIALOGUE
ACTIVE
PRO-SUMERS
C O N V E R S A T I O N
CONTROL
Power is going horizontal

10. ¨ Going back to Dale Carnegie in
1936, we know that making
people feel important is the
precursor to persuasion
¨ Once PR-driven interactions make
people feel important (‘someone is
listening to me’), then stories are
told via conversations
“Make the other person feel
important and do it sincerely”
Persuasion 1.0

11. ¨ “When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic, but with
creatures of emotion, creatures with prejudice
and motivated by pride and vanity”
Carnegie’s other astute observation

12. ¨ ‘You are important to us’
¨ ‘We need your opinions to help inform our actions’
¨ ‘We are listening to you and you will be heard’
Communication starts with listening

13. Social brands action like people, not things
2014.04.29
¨ Listening > Hearing
¨ Following > Leading
¨ Learning > Teaching
¨ Seeing > Showing
¨ Feeling > Living

14. § Whether or not there is listening, of course social
media increases the demand to be heard,
regardless of merit
§ [Ironic that those demanding to be heard can often
seem least interested in listening!]
§ ‘Me’ and ‘I’ narcissism, lack of attention span,
rampant impatience, toxic anger and abuse
abounds
§ Crowdsourcing intelligence versus mob rule?
Social media is emotional media!

15. A-P emotional social diversity

16. 1. Lust ‘I want this’
2. Greed ‘I need this’
3. Gluttony ‘I must have more’
4. Sloth ‘I haven’t thought about it’
5. Wrath ‘I am angry about this’
6. Envy ‘I want what s/he’s got; I am worth it’
7. Pride ‘I am better; I deserve this’
The seven deadly ‘digital sins’

17. The emotional power of metaphor
¨ Social media enables the easy
application of metaphors used
in everyday language for the
development of corporate
narrative – e.g. ‘word pictures’
– to convince consumers about
a product brand with story
‘frames’ that already exist in
their unconscious ‘emotional’
brains

18. Metaphor elicitation tunes into emotions
¨ Research is key, asking people before starting a
social media effort things like:
§ When you think about [company], what is the first
thing that comes to mind?
§ What do you feel when you see this image?
§ Can you share some of your past experience in
dealing with [area where product offers some
benefit]?

19. We’re wired for stories
Scientific American Mind
(August/September 2008)Source: Hoffman

20. Applying search insights
§ Using tools like Google Trends, PR people can mine search
results for key words, and inject compelling metaphors into
online content by combining Search Engine Optimization
(SEO) tactics with conventional PR approaches
§ The ‘natural language’ words people are using to search
can be discovered, the results of which can be used to
tailor a narrative’s messaging elements.
§ Keywords can be crafted as metaphors, which can be
integrated into media messaging, news releases, speech
content, ‘elevator pitch,’ etc.

21. The modality of social media storytelling
§ While marketers tend to consciously think in terms of
text, ‘real’ people unconsciously think in terms of
images
§ As eyeballs migrate to the Internet, even ‘word
picture’ text will not be enough as multimedia –
videos and pictures and sounds – are being
programmed via social media

22. What are we looking at?

23. What are we thinking about?
¨ Social media
marketing involves the
psychology of
persuasion

24. ...and the unconscious mind rules
§ Our deepest thoughts – the ones that account for our
behaviour in the marketplace – are unconscious
§ “According to most estimates, about 95 percent of
thought, emotion, and learning occurs in the unconscious
mind - that is, without our awareness” [Gerald Zaltman]
§ Evidence of how the emotions of the unconscious
mind drive human behaviour comes from neuroscience
(using advanced new fMRI brain scans), psychology, and
is being widely adopted in marketing

25. Stories tap into the unconscious mind
¨ People tend to remember products
when they are woven into the
narrative of media content
¨ They tend not to remember brands
that don’t play an integral role in the
story because people can see them
as being ‘just ads’

26. Persuasion 2.0
¨ When people commit
themselves in public
to something, they
have created a new
‘image template’ of
themselves...
¨ People will do and say
whatever is necessary
to conform with their
new public image...

27. It’s ‘like’ signing a public confession

28. The death of deference

29. Social media is visual media
“There's a good reason why
pictures communicate so
powerfully. A disproportionate
amount of brainpower is
dedicated to visual processing,
which means that what we see
has far more impact than what
we're told. In fact, we acquire far
more information through vision
than all the other senses
combined.”

30. Where data meets design to tell stories

31. 2014.04.29
31

32. “Which ones makes sense for us?”
32

33. § The Financial Services Industry (FSI) is now at a turning
point in the industry’s adoption of social media
§ One organization after another is at least starting with
one branded social media channel
§ After years of apprehension, many organizations are
taking their first tentative steps onto social network;
others are jumping in with both feet…
Times are a-changing…
33

34. Social channels galore
34

35. The dawning realization
35
¨ “Social media humanizes customer service, brings
¨ businesses closer to their stakeholders, and makes
¨ information more accessible to the knowledge
¨ workers who are the heart of any FSI organization.
¨ For an industry built on trust, accountability and
¨ knowledge management, that’s a good thing.”
- HootSuite

36. Fearless engagement earns respect, trust
36

37. Look through the other end of the telescope
37
¨ “By researching their customers as closely as their
customers are now researching them, financial
services organizations can improve their image
and counter unfounded negativity with facts, as
well as identify communities of targeted
customers”
- IBM

38. The bar for social in FSI is getting higher
38

39. The precedent-setting disclosure Tweet
39

40. 40
Pushing the envelope drives change

41. § Social media has taken a ‘wrecking ball’ to walls dividing traditional
marketing functions such as advertising and PR
§ The boundaries between distinct corporate domains such corporate
affairs, marketing, human resources and customer service are blurring
§ Where exactly does ‘internal’ end and ‘external’ begin these days?
§ Social media dramatically increases stakeholder touch points, each of
which represents opportunity and risk
§ An increasing percentage of time consuming corporate information
occurs online using a mobile display, but marketers still spend a
disproportionate time focused on traditional media
§ Competitive pressures will drive adoption eventually…
§ From customer service to recruitment, corporate functions can be
enhanced using social media
Digital can be ‘disruptive’
41

42. 42
Source: McKinsey

43. 4343
Source: McKinsey

44. 4444
Source: McKinsey

45. 4545

46. Thank you!
@BobPickard | bob.pickard@huntsworth.com