No Small Change

CHAPTER 19Must Planning Your Comms Be So Horribly Complicated?

If you're one of that significant minority who still thinks that ‘marketing’ is the same thing as ‘marketing communications’, then this is the chapter you've been waiting for. This chapter discusses some aspects of what marketing communications will look like in the new financial marketing era.

In three bullet points, the answer is that overall, compared to how things have been previously, they will be a whole lot more:

• Measurable (and measured);
• Multilayered;
• Concerned with engagement.

Or in one bullet point, having responsibility for them will be a whole lot more:

• Complicated.

The short answer to the question in the chapter's headline is ‘Yes.’

Like much in this book, these are of course generalisations. Some financial services marketing communications (do you mind if for the purposes of this chapter we call them FS marcomms?) have been measurable, and/or multilayered, and/or concerned with engagement for many years. If we pick out the firm that, in our view, would walk away with the FS Marcomms 30-Year Consistent Excellence Award, the direct-to-consumer insurer Direct Line, we'd argue that give or take the odd lapse in the middle of the period, it has fairly consistently been all three:

1. As a ‘brand response’ communicator dependent on direct-to-consumer marcomms for the great majority of its business, all of its comms activities have always been measurable (and measured);
2. By the same token, as a very large ...