One of the questions that came up in Abu Dhabi is that Social Media is great, but what’s it go to do with the CIO? CIOs are the main audience here at MEFTEC and media is a marketing thing isn’t it?
This got me thinking, as most of the social media presentations do focus upon marketing related matters.
My first exposures to social media for example, came from the Head of Experiential Marketing in one of the banks.
His job was to track customer experiences online and look at new ways to reach out via, at that time, channels like YouTube and virtual worlds like Second Life. As Facebook and Twitter have arisen, they’re in that space too.
Equally, as branches appear in virtual worlds and on social media, they also appear to be a marketing thing run by the marketing groups.
I look at my friend Christophe Langlois’s blog and read his entry about the top 10 most followed banks on twitter - BNP Paribas (x2), Rabobank (x2), Buergschaftsbank, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Wealth, ING, ABSA and Caja Madrid – and can see why some bank decisionmakers are cynical about all these goings on.
It’s all marketing.
Just like the old media world of cinema, TV and papers, the new media world is dominated by marketing folks.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr … it’s all about customer comms and getting customers engaged through an improved User Experience.
That's why it's all marketing, because it's just chat and entertainment. Nothing to do with the business of banking.
In talking with a CIO about the business of banking, they said: “of course our CEO and board ‘get’ this new media stuff. Many of them use it. But their question always comes down to: ‘if I invest a dollar in this, will I get two back?’” And the answer, apart from for marketing purposes, is always a resounding ‘no’.”
Hmmmm … it doesn’t quite tally with my other blog entries this week, but if a bank’s board want to believe that social media is just a marketing thing, I’m sure the new media based competition won’t be too worried.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...