Soon we will launch our new website, I’ve been working on it this week, and wanted to give you an idea of what I want to achieve.
I want to build a postmodern website.
It will be too clever to for most people to understand what it is we do.
It will make clever jokes, then point out them and explain what was clever about them, to patronise those who didn’t see the jokes, and bore those who had understood them and not found them funny in the first place.
75% of you will dislike it instantly.
The other 25% will find the first two or three pages you visit quirkily interesting then get bored of it and leave.
100% of you will only look at it just to see if it really is as bad as you’ve heard.
The only measure of its success will be my own smug satisfaction.
We will receive no complaints or feedback as it will be so arrogantly self serving and impenetrable viewers will want to repress the experience immediately.
We will use this as evidence that it must be good.
Through the above, it will conform perfectly to the traditional marketing standards of the financial services industry.
I know things are getting better, but still too often whenever I read the client facing output of the industry at large it makes me weep openly. And all of us are responsible. Product literature is cannon fodder for criticism but it isn’t any single party’s fault. Marketing departments are frustrated at compliance departments, who point to the regulations. This isn’t going to change without some serious collaborative effort all round and the chances of that are depressingly slim. I see some great websites and marketing literature produced nowadays for advisers but they are still in the minority. The less said about some of the nauseating pomp exhibited by the superhero fund management in advertising the better.
All in all, notable good examples aside, the financial services industry is seriously underdeveloped on marketing. It matters more than anyone recognises. The question is, will it ever get to the top of the to do list?
