Alternative marketing thinking

The Royal Bank of Canada has started a unique web portal to help students learn about money management, through video and text blogs by six chosen bloggers. RBC p2p claims to be a place where students can voice their own thoughts about the kind of banking they really need and want. The six bloggers are a mix of university students, aged between 19 to 29 years, right from all the way in Saskatchewan to British Columbia. A good thing would be to link up this blog to more student-popular social websites like Facebook, MySpace and others. We think that Twitter updates on what students are discovering would also revolutionize it and make it more interactive, something that students would actually talk about even when they are not using it.

There are many interesting experiments happening out there trying to help websites and web experiences stand out from the sea of sameness. San Francisco ad agency Publicis & Hal Riney has redesigned its website to enable a mouse-free experience. Use a webcam to navigate the site. Try it with an iCam enabled Mac, it really works. Modernista has gone in for web 2.0 coolness with this attempt with a floater. StrawberryFrog did something similar with GirlSmiles. Blog formats are catching on too. Coudal Partners started this trend. Now Barbarian Group is going that way too.

When Google’s Eric Schmidt announced that “Corporate marketing is the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America”, it created a stir in marketing and advertising circles. Now there’s news that Microsoft is putting together a new approach to measuring ad effectiveness of online campaigns. Beyond the last click. More from Publishing 2.0.

Modernista’s uber planner Gareth Kay has some interesting advice for planners. They need to understand experience and interaction design. He cues his readers to some wonderful resources. Most usefully this presentation by David Armano, VP Experience Planning at Critical Mass.

According to a new report from Synergistics Research, one in five households now have a banking relationship with a virtual, internet-only institution that requires e-transactions for high-yield savings accounts or discount loans. Banks like HSBC Direct, ING Direct, Emigrant Bank, Capital One and Citi Direct, while focussing on saving money are proving to be substantial competition for traditional banks’ core deposit business. American Banker reports on this here.

Gesture based interactions bring the next level of engagement to messages and ideas. Wave your hand at a screen and play around. Watch demo here. Also of interest Adobe’s interactive billboard installation. New stuff from Adidas.

For months, as banking meltdowns in the virtual world Second Life cost participants steep losses of real money, corporate owner Linden Lab of San Francisco stuck to a laissez-faire line, essentially saying, “We just host the software; residents should avoid deals that sound too good to be true.” But this week, Linden Lab abruptly banned virtual banks that can’t furnish “proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter.” The problems arose with many organisations offering residents unsustainably high interest rates. According to this story, one virtual-bank meltdown may have produced aggregate losses of some $700,000 in real money to many hundreds of Second Life “residents” in a manner that would be illegal in the real world. Here is the policy document from Liden Labs regarding inworld banks in SL. For more also visit this section in FAQs.

Wall Street Journal has a detailed story here

In the last decade, the concept of DIY (Do It Yourself) has seen itself rise above home improvement and merge into various lines of products. Capital One®, the innovation-oriented diversified financial services company offering credit, savings and loan products to customers in the United States, UK, and Canada has now launched America’s first DIY Credit Card. The first step to acquire this new card is where the applicants must first indicate their credit level from the options. This will lead to the rewards that can be available to them being outlined and range from rewards on gas and groceries to discounted APRs. Applicants can even choose a design for their card in the next step. Finally, a review is made of the primary features and offers of the card and the applicants, if satisfied, can apply for it. The minisite where one can DIY his card is aptly called “Card Lab”.

Adidas has installed a virtual mirror that, instead of displaying a true reflection, shows a 3D image of customers’ feet with different shoe models on them. The camera captures the customer’s feet and legs and displays them as a video scene on the monitor. The various shoe models are inserted into this picture. Customers can now try on a variety of models in front of a virtual mirror without changing their shoes. More from GizMag Mercedes Benz. One Car Six Journeys.

Wells Fargo Banks is always trying out new ideas, so it is no surprise that the bank has made some very interesting moves to participate in the 2.0 economy. Like Stagecoach Island, an interactive experience, where people, young and old enter the virtual world through a specially created experience and engage with the brand. Social media has always been on the Wells Fargo radar, having set up Stagecoach Island in 2005. Infact according to Tim Collins, SVP of experiential marketing at San Francisco-based bank, the bank’s social media strategy has evolved from there. “We saw a lot of reaction to it and a lot of comments and blog posts — a lot of the reaction came from social media circles. That was kind of a surprise to us,” he says. “So we started paying attention more to the blogosphere. We started reading blogs on a regular basis. We started to get more comfortable with social media and rolled out our first blog in March 2006 with Guided by History. With some experience in the blogosphere, Collins adds, the bank rolled out several more blogs, including Student LoanDown and a Stagecoach Island blog. Read more in BankTech.