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More about phones, banks and social media
I’ve blogged in the past about how I am using my new phone to run my life in a constant quest for organization. When I bought my phone (the HTC Incredible) at the end of May, the reviews heralded it as the latest and greatest. The reviewers couldn’t seem to say enough good things about it. I knew when I bought it that the reviewers’ excitement would last about a week, until the next new phone was released.
Sure enough, Motorala released the Droid X. My brother AND my mother both bought it. (Yes, my mother, who until recently didn’t even know how to take a picture with her phone, let alone email with it, now owns a phone that the tech guys are drooling over.)
I’m just a little bit jealous. The Droid X is a fabulous phone. (If you really want to know why, you can visit www.phonearena.com which will tell you anything you want to know about any type of phone.)
There are truly a lot of things about the phone that are thrilling and interesting. (By now you might be thinking that I’m one of those techies I mentioned. Trust me, I’m not.) Anyway…one of the things that grabbed my attention about the launch of the Droid X is how Motorola used Social Media to promote it. I know about the event, in part, because a family member found the phone hidden in Birmingham, Alabama. True story. Really, truly, true.
So, by know you are probably wondering how this relates to banking. It does. I promise. Recently we’ve discussed using social media in several of our financial webinars. For the most part we conclude that financial services companies haven’t embraced social media, but we expect to see more experimentation. However, we acknowledge that the fit between banks and social media is a bit of a struggle. And since when I’m not thinking about my phone, I’m thinking about the banking industry, it got me thinking about what banks could learn from this, if anything.
The Droid X promotion was interesting because it combined users’ virtual worlds with their real worlds. Verizon did this by using Twitter to tweet clues about where the phones were hidden. The final clue was the GPS coordination for the location of the certificate. The company gave away 21 phones, each valued at $569.99. The tweets were along these lines:
• Last two phones today! Feeling lucky in Las Vegas? Want to see a Droid X in the “Show Me” state? Get ready because clues are coming!
• Droid X designate #1 has hit Las Vegas Blvd. GPS coordinates transmitting in 30 minutes. Let it roll!
• If you are in Las Vegas, go to N 36 09.308 W 115 08.977. Check with Google Maps but hurry!
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think banks should jump head first into social media today, or even anytime soon. But since advertisers have to go where the people are, and the people are on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and increasingly on the newcomers such as Four Square, I don’t think social networking can be ignored.
To date, I think one of the best uses of social media for banks are things that can be moved from traditional media or things that become better by allowing users to interact with them in some way.
Chase’s Community Giving Program was a great example of this. It was a program that existed for some time, but the company made a decision to move it online. It also took a decision that was typically made by the bank and let customers take part in that decision.
It seems like social media would also be a great place for banks to promote their contests and sweepstakes. The Capital One Million Miles giveaway is the most recent promotion that comes to mind. The company took out print ads and online ads (you can view them in Comperemedia) but it seems like a social media presence would have been a great addition to the promotion.
The “New Normal” consumer is speaking out
Further evidence that the “Great Recession” has had a significant effect on consumer behavior:
– In a recent Mintel consumer study, a substantial 76% of respondents state that they are “smarter shoppers” than they were a year ago.
– Almost seven in ten say they are trying to buy only necessary items, such as food (and that last number includes about half of those households earning more than $100k annually).
But price is not the only consideration. Only half of the consumers in the survey say that low price is more important than good customer service, while seven in ten say they only buy brands they trust.
What does this mean? It means that the definition of “smart shopper” is not just about price, it is more and more about value. And the concept of value has been extended to include trust in the brand, as well as good customer service.
These numbers look very much the same as they did a year and even two years ago, when the recession was just beginning to alter consumer behavior. This means that consumers are settling into a “less is more” mindset, while expecting more from their brand and shopping experiences.
Anyone in Financial Services (along with other industries) who is not conducting branding studies and consumer experience research should probably take note.
Will Apple continue to Dazzle?
Off the heels of a successful rollout of the Apple iPad, Apple has unveiled the Apple iPhone 4.0.
While a prototype was discovered and authenticated earlier this year, questions still arise as to what Apple has up its sleeve. Will the company be able to raise the bar again within the smartphone realm, as top competitors like Google, Samsung and Motorola (for example) continue to close the gap in the uniqueness of the iPhone with similar products?
Does the new iPhone have enough “oomph” to propel it dramatically ahead of the competition again? Only time will tell if the public will embrace the fourth generation of the iPhone, but given Apple’s successful past, I am betting that the new version will be well received. What do you think?
What my cell phone search taught me about mobile banking
I recently bought a new cell phone. I previously had a phone that let me do my email and instant messaging, but wouldn’t allow me to do much else. I learned a lot of important things during the process of buying a new phone. Most importantly I learned that I only TALK on my phone for about 83 minutes every month. (My husband, who supposedly hates cell phones, uses our other 1,317 minutes each month.) But I’m getting off topic…
When I realized how little I talk on my phone, I realized that I needed a newer phone that would allow me to do more STUFF on it. What else I needed to do on it wasn’t exactly clear, but how else could I justify the $219 we pay each month for our cell phones? (Two phones, both with data and 1,400 minutes.)
After the agonizing process of trying to find the perfect phone, I now own an Android Incredible. I’m still learning how to use it. In fact, I’m learning really important stuff about it every day. So far it’s helped me navigate to strange places across town and find a restaurant in the mall. I also now always know the five-day forecast. Yesterday I bought my first app for the phone. It is going to organize my entire life and I know it will be life changing. I have a long list of other apps that I want to find.
I didn’t grow up with a cell phone. I didn’t grow up with a computer, let alone email or the Internet. I didn’t grow up with a scanner, a fax machine, a color printer, or an iPod. I grew up with Trim Line phones, typewriters and record players. But in this day and age I use my phone to run my life. I use it for my email, instant messaging, my entire calendar, my grocery list, my to do list, Facebook updates, GPS navigation, the weather forecast, to name a few.
And that brings me—albeit in a roundabout way—to my point. Mobile banking. Clearly mobile banking is going to happen – it needs to happen. It’s a question of when, not if. Right now mobile banking isn’t on my list of things to do on my phone. For me to do mobile banking, I need my bank to receive all my bills electronically. And I want to be able to use my bank to do all my budgeting. Those two things would make mobile banking work for me. But right now I don’t want to pay bills remotely because all my bills are at home in a folder. Is there an App for that?