Welcome to our digital marketing round-up
Here at Kurtosys we fall down the digital rabbit hole so you don’t have to. We’ve pulled out some of the best reports, eBooks and articles from the digital sphere, ready for you to use for effective fund marketing.
This week’s round up brings you advisor marketing, the return of Pokémon Go, banking tech experts and a financial Waiting for Godot situation.
Not Content with Your Content?
LinkedIn Pulse: Why creativity is so important for businesses, branding and marketing
“All great art is born of the metropolis.”
– Ezra Pound
As you can see, this article’s got my creative juices flowing. That main title is probably a bit hit-and-miss I’ll admit, but how about that Ezra Pound quotation for relevance to the B2B marketing world, eh? Bang on. Richard Gillingwater’s musings urge not just marketers, but all areas of an organisation, to be more creative. As he says, neuroscientists and poets are as one, as they agree that an emotional connection (between managers and employees, employees to clients and the wider world) is what drives memorability of content and breeds success. It even includes some relevant quotations from the likes of Maya Angelou and Richard Branson. Are you willing to take the plunge, making personality-tinged blog posts, or bringing your office’s thriving company culture to your website and social media channels? You don’t have to create the next Infinite Jest, but a bit of creativity can take your business to the next level.
Financial Services Marketing: 5 content destinations for the modern-day advisor
Financial news is big news, and relevant news, always. As the financial world goes digital, not just in the fintech sense, financial advisors also need to be web-savvy to keep abreast of exactly wagwan in the industry. It helps to relate to clients, their investor audience, and they can use modern marketing to react to the current financial climate. Luckily, Jen Diehl has a lot of legwork to bring you some great examples of financial advisor marketing, saving you the effort of scouring the depths of Google. Notable examples include Barron’s Next, who we’ve included in FFMR before and produce wonderful video content aimed at millennials new to investing, Financial Advisor (whose LinkedIn group is a forum of financial services chat) and thought-leadership content courtesy of Financial Advisor IQ.
The Fintech Saviours
The Next Web: Why fintech could have saved Pokémon Go servers
Who would have thought that such differing institutions – investment banks and Pokémon gyms – could actually go hand-in-hand? Confused? Time for a flashback to 2016, and last year’s biggest fad in augmented reality – Pokémon Go. However, the knowledge of its servers constantly crashing was as famed as the game itself, unable to cope with the influx of people wanting to feed their desire of hunting fictional creatures. So how does this link to fintech? Backend scalability is needed for such traffic-inundated apps, and deepstreamHub are the experts in it. Having a background in investment banking, where real-time functions are common practice to further the speed of financial trading, deepstreamHub are the answers to payment app and Pokémon Go-style games’ problems. Little do gamers know that they have the financial world to thank for the development of troubleshooting. The world of fintech knows no bounds.
The Legal & the Illegal
Consult Hyperion: Legal, tender and legal tender
Cash money talk now, and the grey area of ‘legal tender’ seems to be getting the goat of Dave Birch, and its transference to the world of cryptocurrency seems to be causing a bit of confusion too. I feel that we, occupants in the continually digitised financial services space, are much like Vladimir or Estragon in Waiting for Godot; we know that the age of physical money seems to be dying out, but the thought of Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies and the blockchain is an abstract, non-tangible form that may not even show up. This article researches what exactly counts as ‘legal tender’, with some interesting case studies involving Apple, media hype around Bitcoin and even the ‘legalisation of Bitcoin’ in Japan. A scathing, introspective piece of writing as expected, and a riveting read without a doubt.
Wired: Russian Hackers Have Used the Same Backdoor for Two Decades
Here’s another trip back in time (a little further this time) to an insightful story about one of the earliest hacking campaigns in computing history. By uncovering an “ancient” HP computer in a sleepy part of southern England, Russian hackers’ moves on the American government and military agencies from back in the day were also discovered, with some “vintage malicious code” being partly used today by modern hackers known as Turla. We hear a lot of news about devilish malware innovating as quickly as the more cherubic white hats, but it is pretty worrying to hear that a Trojan from 1996 can be found in a similar form, even in 2014. This is an interesting piece on how encryption and the hiding of tracks were barely a concern back then (and absolutely necessary for criminals now of course), and an extremely pertinent quotation from Carl Sagan rounds it off nicely. I think pertinent quotations is a bit of a theme for this week…
Industry News
City AM: Here’s what Sir Tim Berners-Lee had to say about Amber Rudd’s WhatsApp encryption plans after picking up the “Novel Prize for computing” Turing Award
On a similar subject, and a direct follow on from last week’s article about Amber Rudd’s reaction to social media firms in the wake of terrorism, here’s an insight into encryption from the founder of the Internet – Sir Tim Berners-Lee. End-to-end encryption is an integral part of WhatsApp, which Rudd wants to call an end to, but Berners-Lee is instead adamant that modern life without it would simply not be possible. Indeed, his views included within here touch on some Orwellian tropes, and there’s also the highlighting of the fact that lowering encryption has advantages for both ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ alike. Modern life would probably be a whole different place without Berners-Lee; it is certainly a strange thing to see his personal views on issues that his creation has borne since its inception, and the struggle between privacy and social media firms looks set to continue for the foreseeable future.
The Financial Brand: Bank Builds Army of Digital Tech Experts for Every Branch
An army of techies? It sounds like a naff, cult B-movie come to life, but ultimately, the best way for financial institutions to stay with the times is to go the whole hog and get the experts in right away. That seems to be the case here, with NatWest and RBS both investing in specialists to show banking customers exactly how to use cutting-else mobile banking tools for efficient financing. The plan certainly seems like a military operation, with the two banks deploying trained-up ‘TechXperts” into every bank branch, completely transforming the bank’s retail strategies. It sounds an awful lot like an army of digital Santa’s Little Helpers, but when the trainees become the trainers, the financial technology buzz will finally go from idea, to fruition, to product, and out to the consumer. The world over will finally succumb to the fintech revolution, and it’s a positive sign that the traditional players are at the forefront.
Brave New Coin: US States working on blockchain legislation in 2017
Despite the cynicism of blockchain technology that we touched on earlier, here is some more concrete evidence for its coming-into-being. As is reported here, at least eight US States are looking to promote the use of Bitcoin, with a few considering taking the matter to the law’s hands. Brave New Coin have done a run-down of particular States’ plans for cryptocurrencies which are already in effect, from Green Mountain State, to Vacationland, to the Rough Rider State to the Land of Lincoln. I had to look all of those up, but they’re a bit of fun. Whilst there’s nothing on a federal level, state laws themselves should start to get a Bitcoin ball rolling, and for a country as influential as the US, similar bills could be cropping up the world over.
That’s all for this week. Catch up with past Fund Marketing Fridays and don’t forget to return next Friday for more resources.
You can also tweet us with any resources that you’ve found helpful this week.
