The Socially Savvy Advisor + Website: Compliant Social Media for the Financial Industry

Chapter 19How Do We Integrate Social Media with Overall Marketing?

We are at a point where we think of social [media] in a box. But social media will soon be part of all media.

—Mark McKenna, chief marketing officer, Putnam Investments

Talk to any marketing leader, and many will tell you they can't help but think about social media. In fact, they might even have their CEO breathing down their necks over the subject.

That's what happened at Putnam Investments, manager of $153 billion, when CEO Bob Reynolds woke up one day and said: I want to be on Twitter.

“Bob has a passion for technology and communications, so we put together a task force and explored the options,” CMO Mark McKenna says. But that wasn't enough. McKenna recalled that his boss turned to him and said, “Let me be clear. I want to tweet tomorrow.”

You can be sure McKenna wouldn't have been able to meet his boss's demand if he didn't have a larger vision for how marketing needed to work at Putnam.

This larger marketing vision can play on the consumer side as well. I'm reminded of the time when I developed a national campaign to give away one million copies of a free budget kit to help Americans save. The campaign led to over 60,000 orders in a matter of a few days, due to a combination of traditional PR (the Washington Post), an appearance on Dr. Phil, and social media or the word-of-mouth effect. Today, the free tools continue to be accessed by thousands each year with minimal effort, thanks largely to social ...