Recession is used as the big word to explain why things are bad but I maintain that really the BIG R word is RELEVANCE and the fact that in general Banks got complacent. They forgot about the customer and their marketing programmes lost relevance. What really needs to happen is to forget about the recession and look at how to shake things up a bit.

Recession brings with a whole bunch of problems, on the whole people panic because the world has changed and it appears to be a hell of a battlefield. I look at the situation a bit differently….as Winston Churchill said ‘ When you find yourself in hell, keep going.’ Less time should be spent worrying about it and more understanding it and the fact that such volatility has always been with us. As John D Rockerfeller said ‘ These are the days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depression have come and gone. Prosperity has and always returned and will again.’ In fact the US economy has taken a downturn at least once a decade for the last 200 years. This one is different in the way it has rocked the financial industry at every level but the way is no different for enterprising companies.

You see, in a recession or turbulent times, you are forced to find new benefits because you are forced to be more relevant to the world around you. In other words, stop thinking about what has gone and what might have been and start thinking about what could be. What do you need to do to be more relevant to customers in such times - and this is the crux of it. Good marketing means you understand the latest insights and incorporate them into your planning. But if I look at what has happened in the financial sector over the last 9 years all I see is a move away from relevance and more to chest beating - talking at your customers instead of having a meaningful dialogue. Do retail customers really care about a bank being a global powerhouse? I am sure that corporate customer do but then that message needs to be delivered appropriately and not via a mass media approach.

So, Relevance has gone and Relationships suffered…and bankers got their Rs kicked. When times are good you can compensate for lack of relevance and poor relationships. In fact it seems like you can makle money doing nothing. But when times are bad, doing nothing isn’t such a good plan. You have to stop, think and evaluate. You cannot continue engaging customers in the old way - you need to learn a new language. The world has changed and what was relevant yesterday could be totally irrelevant today.

Sound marketing techniques will get you there as long as you follow them dilligently because at the end of the day what makes marketing work is by being relevant and meaningful by identifying profitable insights and acting upon them. When the world changes that’s the time to go back and talk to customers and check that what you are doing is on track. Better still a good research programme ensures that the early warning signs help you to plan such things in advance.

There are plenty of big name brands who have managed to keep going in times of economic trouble or harsh competitive environments by thinking smarter. In the very late 1980s/early 1990, with Australia in deep recession and withluxuries being hit for six, Mercedes were able to re-present their offering to ensure continued relevance. By focusing on safety they chose to emphasise the substance beneath the surface of luxury - in so doing and together with some hard hitting advertising, who could disagree with the fact that buying a Mercedes was a good thing - even in recession…click this link to see more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojePSOrnYw

Ther are a number of brands who repositioned themselves successfully in similar circumstance. Years ago, Tesco having successfuly repositioned on quality and having overcome its own ‘cheap’ history, suddenly found itself becoming less relevant as the economy worsened. Theuy had to make sure that its focus on quality did not contradict the financial issues people were now facing and the solution was ‘Every little helps’…

There are many examples, Duracell in the USA after value packs started to tear into its market share , Fairy Liquid in the UK  versus ‘value’ offerings. Both had to dig deep in order to become more relevant t and both succeeded. Basically the answer is there if you look for it.

As for Bankers…..well a touch more difficult but nonetheless achievable. The unfortunate part is that the solid, dependable, clever but boring banker who you trusted is now mis-trusted. As reported in the Daily Telegraph in November 2008, these untouchables were now the ‘new pantomine villains.’ Years of making huge profits had made them kings but now customers were furious. In fact if you look at bank advertising since around 2000 it has all been about global, big, expertise, trust, partnership, heritage. In the research I was involved with in 2006 and 2007 consumers fed back that they disliked this type of advertising especially the one featuring a smiling private banker who tells you that he’s your trusted partner. Well one thing is for sure and that’s how customer see it, the results prove the advertising to have been both irrelevant and wrong….who could be trusted?

Banks need to get back to doing what they were great at doing in the 1990s - customer focused businesses that used their expertise to help customers make the most of their money. Get back to being relevant and meaningful. On the whole, if I look at advertising since 2007 there’s been no change - some of it is even scary such as WaMu’s ad in the US: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g55Ji6fLw-A

Will they ever learn? Well, some will. If I look at NatWest’s latest series of ads it is definitely in the right direction. A coupe of the creatives are a bit too silly for the times but on the whole the ‘another way’ campaign shows that there are bankers out there that you can trust..

 operate under different conditions. Stress, uncertainty and panic evoke certain reactions, as do joy and euphoria. When things get difficult some people, just like an ostrich, put their head in the sand and hope for the best. Some continue to be bold, and while being a lion may lead to over-confidence, being a bit foxy can help make the most of opportunities in difficult times.

Building brand value in turbulent times is not easy, but those that try end up far stronger than those that do not. It is exactly during such times that companies batten down the hatches and trim the sails. While this is usually good business practice, the problem comes when you trim the sails so much that you end up with a handkerchief. In such times what you don’t do can hamper business and brand growth.

In today’s world, not to communicate is to communicate – and probably means that you end up communicating something unintentionally. If you don’t do something to keep that customer relationship vibrant, then someone else will – and it just might be the fox.

As marketers, we operate in an increasingly challenging communications environment. One of our biggest tasks is to try and cut through the clutter of communications that hit our customers on a daily basis so that they notice what we are saying. People today are very media savvy. They are bombarded with messages from different media and they have less time to absorb messages. This requires a shift from interruption to engagement strategies so that your message resonates with your target audience. So, given the complexity of media as well as the sheer volume of messaging, not communicating means that someone else will fill the void you create.

Depending on who you listen to, we either are or aren’t in a recession. But whatever the economic situation, the basic principles of marketing communications remain the same – maintaining a dialogue with customers based on understanding their needs and insights into what drives them. However, despite all we have learned as marketers, in a recession it appears some organisations panic and fail to communicate.

If one major purpose of advertising is to increase market share, then in turbulent times it serves at the very least to help you maintain share. To maintain your position in the market place, you need to make sure that you do not sever your relationship with the customer. Unfortunately, a removal of investment leads to lower customer stimulus, a reduced number of reminders in their short-term memory box, and ultimately a loss of market share. Now this might sound like the typical moan of a marketing guy crying about having no money, but history is on the marketers’ side, going back as far as 1923. More telling is that since 1970 there has been ample evidence that companies who maintain or increase investment in troubled times double their share compared with those who don’t (PIMS study 2002).

There should be nothing surprising here. The reason for advertising and marketing in the first place is to meet customer needs based on insights into their behaviour. The mistake people make is to assume what the customer’s behaviour is going to be and then slash communication. What you should be doing is understanding the societal impact on customer behaviour and addressing it so that you continue to build a dialogue and a meaningful relationship.

With financial services, it could be even more pertinent, especially in the current environment. As customers lose confidence in key financial services values, you have a knock-on effect caused by negative coverage in the press. The additional media coverage damages trust and the risk is that customer distrust becomes part of the culture. Here’s a nice YouTube video on the sub-prime crisis.

We all exhibit animal tendencies from time to time, and occasionally they are reflected in how we operate under different conditions. Stress, uncertainty and panic evoke certain reactions, as do joy and euphoria. When things get difficult some people, just like an ostrich, put their head in the sand and hope for the best. Some continue to be bold, and while being a lion may lead to over-confidence, being a bit foxy can help make the most of opportunities in difficult times.

Have we gone from trusted to busted? Well, in times of uncertainty, consumers seek safety and competence from confident brand leaders they can trust, to give them a greater sense of control. The want brand leaders to talk to them, explain and demonstrate a way forward, not hide their head in the sand like an ostrich.

So what defines an ostrich, apart from skinny legs, a long neck, big eyes, and a big ball of feather in the middle? A marketing ostrich hides itself, doesn’t engage and looks at things from a short-term perspective. These tend to be brands most affected by a credit crisis, because brands that behave like ostriches are often seen as part of the problem – not part of the solution.

Now, a fox is entrepreneurial and consequently an opportunist. The fox looks around, sees that the farmer has gone and takes the chicken. In a nightclub the fox is the one who steps in and steals your partner when you stop communicating. But you can’t complain, because you created the environment for the fox. The fox doesn’t hide, is easy to see, is totally transparent, confident and credible, and delivers tangible results. The fox is a winner.

In discussions with media owners (excluding FOX), we can see which brands are continuing to invest in 2008 despite the economic situation. Pan-European media owners like CNN, FT, Bloomberg and Fortune all reported strong Q1 revenues from the financial services sector for 2008, and their view is that this will continue. Luckily we are among those brands, and our new campaign will get the boost it needs to embed itself. In fact, we see the current turmoil as an opportunity to demonstrate our laser focus on anticipating and exceeding our customers’ needs. Our intention is to make sure that we act while the time is right to continue building brands. The need for action is especially important in these times, and is summarised beautifully in a quote from JFK: “There are risks and costs to a programme of action. But they are far less than the long- range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” Now he was a bit of a fox…

A brand that resonates strongly with its target audience is a belief system. It delivers a whole series of meanings and complex emotions that force you to have an opinion. That opinion - hopefully positive - will drive your actions and reactions to the brand, whether it is a product, service or person. David Beckham is a brand as much as he is a footballer because of his relevance to several target audiences, including football fans, users of Gillette blades and wearers of Police sunglasses. But what happens to Beckham when he can no longer ‘bend it’? Can he maintain his relevance and meaning to the varied audiences? If not, Gillette and Police will need to evaluate their options.

Madonna is a brand that constantly re-invents itself. There are few people who could call Madonna bland and, whether you like her music or not, she certainly provokes an emotion. Now, my references to celebrities are meant purely to demonstrate that brands are not names put on a podium simply for display. Brands need constant nurturing, the belief system among your target audience needs nurturing and, like a healthy plant, you need to give it the right food. As Prince Charles would advise, talk to your plant from time to time.

In financial services, brands are becoming more and more important. It is very easy for a brand in our industry to become bland. In fact, it almost goes with the territory. To be brutal, an industry categorised as low interest, with low involvement and where all products are similar has all the hallmarks of commoditisation. Add to this the fact that with some financial services, inertia appears to be the largest factor behind loyalty and you quickly understand that we have to constantly think about how to add value in order to make the value proposition abundantly clear and fully relevant. We need to develop meaningful relationships with our customers so that we become and stay relevant. When we stop being relevant then we not only fail to attract new customers but we start to lose the ones we have. In a way, that’s how Madonna keeps going.

World class branding is what makes the difference between brand and bland. It’s the difference between a vibrant offer like Nike and Gola (does anyone remember Gola?). In marketing we have the four Ps (product, price, place and promotion). I tend to focus branding on the six Cs (actually, it was five Cs and an S, but it sounds so much more guru-like to have six Cs…).

• ‘C’ingle minded visionary approach to branding and all communications
• Compelling proposition based on customer/consumer insights
• Commitment from all areas to the brand and what it stands for in the customer’s eyes
• Communicate the story – internally as well as externally
• Consistency in delivery – across all touch points in order to live up to the promise
• Connection with stakeholders: building relationships, not just fulfilling a need

If we apply these principles, we will succeed in brand building to world class standards. Your, like a ‘ray of light’, will not only be in ‘vogue’ but its meaning will drive ‘deeper and deeper’ and ‘just like a prayer’ it will become something you ‘cherish’ to the point that it becomes ‘human nature’…