Saving Rush In Britain

The Northern Rock crisis had everyone worried for a bit in UK. But now, experts notice a savings rush in banks and building societies. This is Money reports that this new trend is in wake of the recently hiked savings rates by banks, as aid in the struggle to collect valuable funds. Financial institutions in order to obtain valuable funds pushed up the saving rates, resulting in several eager savers joining in. With interest rates notching up seven percent for one year bonds, the saving market had more additions. Read more.

Zillow And The Complexity Of Shopping Websites

Zillow is the real estate valuation site used by thousands. The site started out by analyzing real estate sales records and other public data to estimate values for homes in America. Then it started aggregating listings of homes on sale. Rich Barton founder and chief executive of Zillow is now hoping to revolutionize the mortgage market by introducing it in a shopping style. The mortgage market is particularly complicated because consumers can’t simply compare interest rates. Lenders offer different rates to different borrowers, based on their credit history, the loan terms they want and the nature of the home. Read more here.

Beating Bank Frauds

VeriSign Inc. has gone above authentication devices such as key chains or fobs to come out with one time password generator embedded in credit cards. The card that will be valid for two years will have a battery powered display that will present a password once a button on the card in pressed. The password, which expires shortly after being generated, can be used along with a banking customer’s static PIN for online banking transactions, thus strengthening security. Users may prefer this innovation over others as it is a part of their card and don’t require them to carry an extra device. Besides, banks may find it easier (and cheaper) to mail these out instead of key chains. Jeremy Kirk talks about how happy he is with this innovation here.

America Is Saving

In an age of recession when Americans are doing all that they can to save up, Bank of America has declared that their Keep the Change programme has its takers accumulating over $10 billion. What started as propagation for the bank’s own Check Card, the eight million people who signed up for this service are happy to have saved up without even actually meaning to. Customer round-ups have alone contributed to $1 billion, implying that people are actually finding ways to get more out of their money. Finextra reports here.

Microsoft Goes Crispin. Nike Runs Away.

CPB recently won the Microsoft account. And the biggest challenge that the agency is facing is to convert a bunch of Mac heads to start seeing the genius that’s Microsoft. “Crispin sort of exists because of the revolution in desktop publishing that the Mac brought about. You could be a small shop and compete against Madison Avenue for the first time because all the tools were in your computer.”, Alex Bogusky in Fast Company. So how will the iconic agency help Microsoft be seen as cool? Read this story . Meanwhile Nike and CPB decided to part ways from their association on the Nike + running account.

Microsoft’s Use And Get Paid Search Engine.

It’s an unusual move for a search engine — and one that doesn’t make Microsoft any money. But the company hopes the tactic helps fill one of its biggest needs: increase sampling of Live Search. Many people are programmed to go to Google to research products and probably still will, even with Microsoft’s carrot dangling in front of them. But if even a portion of those people research their buys on Google and then head to Microsoft for the purchase part, Google’s conversions go down, and it looks less effective, at least to search marketers measuring this type of thing. More. And from search engine specialist Danny Sullivan.

A hospital gets personal

Beautiful campaign from Akron Children’s Hospital’s childhood cancer centre that tells stories of real patients undergoing treatment in the hospital. The site features videos, web 2.0 tools and more to show how young children with cancer do better if they are in a children’s hospital. Powerful stuff.

Marketing in a recession. Another pov.

A few weeks ago we carried David Notolli’s piece on what brands can do in a recession. Here’s a more, in-depth view from research agency Millward Brown.

The Conclusion. During recessions, consumers and marketers alike must make the best of a bad situation. Not every brand will cut spending, but many of those that do will find themselves at a dis-advantage when the recession ends. Marketers need to make the most of every dollar spent in support of their brands if they hope to maintain strong consumer relationships. Those that succeed should then be well positioned to take advantage of weaker competition when the good times return.

The key to success during a downturn is maintaining focus. Keep your wits about you and focus on four things: your competition, your brand, your customers, and your communication. If you have a strong, successful brand, focus on what has worked for you so far. If your brand is in a relatively weak position, focus on systematically exploiting what strengths you have while addressing your weaknesses.

Concentrate on your core brands and products. Just like what David wrote, brand needs to support their core proposition and emphasize its value. Strong brands can support a price premium. Consu-mers have clear and strong associations with these brands and know what makes them desirable. Focus your marketing effort on reinforcing what made your brand successful in the first place.

Don’t cut quality. As the pressure to find cost savings increases, companies may be tempted to cut back on the quality of their products or services.

Think internal branding and morale. The motivation level of employees is critical to a company’s success, particularly in service industries. Therefore, workers need to be convinced of the merits of their brand and reassured that their jobs are safe. Use internal communication to remind your staff that they make a difference.

Focus on Your Customers. Keep in touch. Whether the category is B2C or B2B, a brand’s biggest asset during a recession is its existing customer base.

Focus on Your Communication. Review your budget allocations. Your customers are looking to maximize their value for money. You should do the same. Think about the relative cost and effectiveness of the available media channels. You may conclude that you can’t afford to completely pass on TV, but you can extend your TV investment in less expensive media like print, radio and outdoor advertising.

Make your creative work harder. In any communication channel, the best way to leverage your spend is to put it behind high-quality creative. A meta-analysis of econometric sales modeling published in Admap (February 2006) found creative to be the biggest potential multiplier of profit (other than market size). Across a wide variety of categories, brands, and channels, Paul Dyson and Karl Weaver found that creative had five times as much impact on profit as did budget allocation.

Download the story. Here.

Putting A Price On Payment Options

Safety of a bank account is the primary concern for central banks. Next in line is the efficiency of the payment system. Electronic payment options are not just cheaper but far more convenient. Norway explicitly priced point-of-sale and bill-payment transactions and rapidly shifted to electronic payments, while the Netherlands experienced a similar shift without pricing. Electronic payments can confer social benefits considering the fact that the average bank cost of an electronic payment is one-third to one half that of its paper-based equivalent or cash. Also, a merchant’s average cost of accepting a bill payment electronically over a giro network or at the point of sale (POS) is also lower. This may be the next thing to be introduced in the banking industry soon. Read more.

Vietnamese Youth Shaping Banking Future

Vietnam is one of the fastest growing economies of the world after China and India, but surprisingly less than 10% of population have a banking relationship. According to the McKinsey study, young adults in the age group of 21-29 are less wary of borrowing. On most banking-related issues, the generation gap in preferences and attitudes is larger in Vietnam than in the 11 other Asian markets. Ninety-one percent of the young adults had savings accounts, compared with 55 percent of the respondents 30 years or older. Young adults are much more willing than their elders to use remote-banking channels, such as telephones or the Internet. When asked whether they would use Internet banking in the future, a 34-point gap separated young adults from those over 30, compared with 6 and 8 points in China and India, respectively. Read more.