Some people think of an institution as a grey, faceless, monolith towering in the distance. It’s not. An institution is made up of human beings – real, flesh-and-blood people with the same hopes and fears as personal investors, consumers, and retail customers.
Or 6 ways to great content at your next financial webinar, roadshow or summit
This isn’t the punch line to a joke about Citizens United. No, we’re talking about the fact that an institution isn’t a grey, faceless, monolith towering in the distance. An institution is made up of human beings – real, flesh-and-blood individuals with the same hopes and fears as personal investors, consumers, and retail customers. In fact, when it comes to messaging, institutions should be treated as normal people – just like you and me.
In financial marketing-communications, some lose sight of this. We adopt an ‘institutional’ voice in our writing, select the least-objectionable images, churn out vast, grey tracts of copy. We allocate fewer resources, as if communicating with institutional clients somehow mandates a less-creative approach. In doing this, we focus on ways that institutions are different from retail clients when, instead, we should be looking at ways they’re the same.
The truth is, until humans are replaced by droids, the only thing that will ever consume our content is a warm body possessing unique motives and personality – and not a travertine façade.
Communicating with flesh brains
So what do we know about communicating with flesh brains? We know that they are emotional creatures, visually stimulated, and have fixed attention spans. We know that their time is valuable, that their priorities deserve our respect, and that they rely on mental shortcuts to make decisions based on simple cues.
In short, we know that individuals are susceptible to emotional stories that deliver a benefit. Audiences operating from inside a B2B framework are no different.
“The knock on institutional content is that it’s supposed to be more buttoned-up and conservative. That it’s boring. Expectations of dullness beget executions that are lackluster and uninspired.”
The knock on institutional content is that it’s supposed to be more buttoned-up and conservative. That there’s less room for creativity. That it can’t be fun. Or that it’s boring. Put into practice, the expectation becomes self-fulfilling and self-limiting. Expectations of dullness beget executions that are lackluster and uninspired.
Stand out from the stodgy, blue-and-grey crowd
While others are locking B2B-channel communications into an ivory tower, it creates a unique opportunity for the disruptive to slash a new trail, cut against the grain in memorable ways that stand out from the stodgy, blue-and-grey crowd. Given the outsize rewards of succeeding in institutional relative to retail marketing (winning a single B2B client often is worth winning hundreds of thousands or even millions of retail clients), it makes sense not to short-change the creativity, here.
What’s more, if you’re a young communicator surveying the employment landscape and wondering where best to make your mark, the B2B arena is prime hunting ground. Overlooked B2B opportunities are missed chances to delight and surprise. While other candidates compete for a spot at the picked-over retail table, a cagey creative can uncover golden eggs of originality inside the oft-overlooked institutional marketing space.
“All audiences are swayed by the same basic desires buried deep inside their reptilian brains, the seat of fear and greed – the very place that responds to powerful, emotional stories with a clear benefit.”
Of course, B2B audiences have different motives and priorities than retail customers. Rewards points and no-fee checking aren’t what drives them. Instead, they may be motivated by things like fiduciary duty, financial product innovation, or acquiring and maintaining new clients. All audiences, however, are swayed by the same basic desires buried deep inside their reptilian brains, the seat of fear and greed – the very place that responds to powerful, emotional stories with a clear benefit.
Now, on to the click bait. Following are . . .
6 ways to great content at your next financial event
Remember: institutions are people, too.
We just covered this.
Start early
Don’t underestimate the amount of time it takes to develop quality content. From strategy, to writing, to design, to multimedia, there are many steps in the process, and often many steps within each step. In today’s rushed, 24-hour news cycle, there is immense pressure to deliver content quickly, in reactive, rapid-response fashion. If, however, we’re planning an event, don’t fall into this trap. We’re all busy and prone to procrastination; however, one of the wisest things we can do as marketing communicators is to build sufficient time into the process for developing and executing standout content. Planning for some events even begins four to six months out.
Think conceptually
Yes, financial firms loooove to use numbers to tell their stories. But, as any effective communicator knows, powerful concepts and images are the real secret weapons in any presentation. Too many times, marketers and presenters stand in front of a PowerPoint presentation laden with pages and pages of charts and tables. While prying loose the graphs from an account executive’s PowerPoint can be a Herculean challenge, we must continue fighting the good fight. Good presentation content shouldn’t simply be a word-for-word (or graph-for-graph!) recitation of the speech being delivered. Instead, remarks and support materials should complement one another. Great presentation content isn’t a bulleted speech transcription. Rather, great content piques an audience’s interest and tees up a discussion.
Tell a story
Every good story has a conflict, a resolution and a theme. Remember this when developing content. A conflict keeps the audience engaged, wondering what happens next. Usually, the more conflict, the better the story. A resolution delivers the audience to your destination – your call to action, your unique selling proposition, an epiphany about the benefits of your product or service. And a theme, which often is never spoken out loud, provides the bedrock principle, the reason, or the subtext behind the story. It’s the reason you tell it. You’ve heard the adage: Facts tell but stories sell. That’s because great stories touch us on an emotional level and teach us universal truths about human conduct. According to the late Joseph Campbell, one of the world’s foremost authorities on myths and storytelling, ‘Everything starts with a story.’
Invest in quality writing, design and production
It’s tempting to try and do it all ourselves. Computers give us great power to create on our own. In many instances, this is a wonderful, democratizing thing. Other times, when money’s riding on it, turning to trained communications specialists – writers, designers, animators, et al. – to do the heavy lifting gives you a better chance to grab the brass ring. I believe that every person is creative. Each of us is engaged in a profound act of creation – creating our own lives and meanings. However, writing great copy, designing handouts and Keynote presentations, and producing videos are crafts. Craftspeople who’ve spent years or even decades refining their skills are simply more effective and efficient at execution. At the very least, if you can afford to hire professionals to materialize your content, it’ll clear a few things from your jam-packed to-do list.
Don’t forget the gear
How many times have we been to a presentation where the media doesn’t play back properly, the projector can’t be connected, or the audience can’t hear the audio? It’s one of the most frustrating, amateurish – and easily preventable – predicaments in which we find ourselves. We invest considerable time and effort to create something memorable – even breathtaking – that explains our product or service, only to have it fail out of the gate because someone forgot to bring an adapter cable. If you’re counting on a presentation, or video to deliver your message, make a checklist of everything you need to ensure proper playback. Check the equipment the night before to ensure it works. Call the venue well before your event and have a long chat with the audio-visual person. The last thing any presenter wants is to stand red-faced in front of a live crowd, waiting to iron out the ‘technical difficulties.’
Institutions are abstract. People are real.
Remember the old adage to nervous toastmasters about imagining an audience in its underwear? It’s a mental device that helps turn something abstract into something concrete. Same goes for institutional, B2B marketing: the more we can envision our audience as real people, rather than an abstraction, the better our chances of connecting on a persuasive, human level. And the more concretely we can connect – using powerful concepts, stories, and high-quality creative – the better our chances for delivering impactful content that spurs people to action and moves the ROI needle.
Solving the complex messaging needs of financial clients
Mark Olsen is a financial writer and creator of branded content with more than 20 years of experience, 15 of them on the brand side, writing and producing marketing and digital media for institutional investment manager Pimco, where he launched the firm’s global video practice and authored its multimedia brand standards guide. He has written, directed and produced more than a thousand custom, unique digital assets for the web as well as for dozens of live events, including conferences in cities around the world, featuring financial personalities and well-known government policymakers.
Blue Room Post is an independent, full-service, creative production and post-production company that crafts custom, digital content for financial companies, their agencies, marketers and event planners. The Blue Room financial content practice is dedicated to solving the complex messaging needs of capital markets, finance-related firms and their stakeholders.
For more information, or to view our financial reel, please contact us at (310) 727-2600 or mark@blueroompost.com.