Modern Marketing

‘If you don’t offer an experience you’re not relevant’: Why banks need to be at SXSW

  • SXSW offers banks opportunities for marketing, networking and above all, engagement with customers that they're missing
  • Banks' SXSW absence shows financial services innovation isn't as far along as it seems at more industry-focused events like Money 2020 or Finovate
close

Email a Friend

‘If you don’t offer an experience you’re not relevant’: Why banks need to be at SXSW
This weekend at Antone's Nightclub in Austin, Capital One executives donning jeans and zip-up hoodies were scattered across the ground floor demoing the bank's innovations in augmented reality, while upstairs, some of their colleagues took SXSW audience questions in a full house. The line outside for the next event snaked around the block. It's clear that financial services has come a long way in the past three years. The conference circuit alone is evidence of its growth. Money20/20, once a payments focused conference, welcomed 11,000 attendees at the last U.S. event and now covers all manner of fintech. Finovate, a much smaller event that began as a giant pitch session for startups, added two days of speaker content to its last event in New York. But you’d be hard-pressed to find any financial brands at SXSW (other than Capital One, which has been a “super sponsor” of the Austin conference and festival since 2016). Much like the industry itself -- even in its own silo -- the financial technology excitement at SXSW is around young startups. And banks are throwing their weight behind those. USAA was the “presenting sponsor” of the SXSW Hackathon on March 13; there are many fintech startups in town presenting at the SXSW Trade Show and a handful of fintech related panels over the course of the week; Pefin, the artificial intelligence financial adviser where former BNP Paribas executive Catherine Flax is CEO, was named a finalist in the SXSW Interactive Innovation Awards. “I’d like to see more centralization around fintech,” said Leah Romanoff, the fintech lead for S&P Global, the centuries-old legacy fintech firm that announced largest AI deal ever last week, its $550 million acquisition of Kensho. “Fintech isn’t its own track. It’d be nice to get more granular.” Onlookers agree that banks should have a bigger presence. They miss big opportunities for marketing, networking and above all, engagement with customers, especially millennials. Financial services companies are increasingly differentiating themselves with experiences instead of product pricing — Citi and TD Bank have created pop-up ATM gifting machines, for example. But SXSW is a mecca for experiential marketing, and financial brands are waking up to the fact that competition is no longer just the other bank, but instead the customer experience provided by other brands and setting experience expectations for financial services customers. “People are shopping online. They’re going to places only for experience, and if you don’t offer an experience, you’re not a relevant brand,” said Joy Schoffler, chief strategy officer for Casoro Capital. c1 Capital One House, for example, takes over Antone’s Nightclub for daily talks, workshops, demos, happy hours and music showcases in the evenings. It also ran a #GoSwagless campaign, in which they invited attendees to vote for one of three nonprofits that the bank will redirect funds to for the usual event swag. “There are a lot of people with a big influence and following here at SX," Schoffler said. "This is also a chance for big brands to identify themselves as innovators in front of a large audience. They have to be seen as innovative. They have to be seen as relevant and interesting.” It doesn’t even cross banks’ minds though, she said. Banks talk about their need to tear down their silos -- “we don’t actually have any silos,” one banker claimed this weekend -- but the should-be-changing mentality hasn’t affected the way they choose event presence, and many still opt enthusiastically for "traditional" banking conferences, like BAI. “You tend to operate in your industry silo, but there’s so much you can learn at events like this from super impressive innovators,” said Schoffler, an active leader within the fintech community who sits on the board for the SXSW Accelerator and used to help manage public relations for the Finovate conferences. Her background also includes board positions at major regulatory advocacy organizations. “It doesn’t even cross their mind when they’re looking at their marketing spend," she said. "It doesn’t compute as ‘I need to be there’ yet.” Their glaring absence just shows that despite their suddenly fast turnaround -- they’re still as large and slow as aircraft carriers at the end of the day, despite their shift from being product-centric to customer-centric -- financial services innovation is still new and perhaps even a bit confused, Flax suggested. Fintech 1.0 was about the automation of everything, she added. The companies looking beyond that, those participating in SXSW, are planning to change how people interact with their finances, which should be about more than just automation. “SXSW is really focused on what’s transformational, what’s changing the way in which people do things,” said Flax, a 20-year banking veteran with senior leadership roles at Morgan Stanley, UBS, JPMorgan -- where she was a chief marketing officer -- and most recently, BNP Paribas. “Financial services is still in it’s nascency in that," she said. "There’s not much fintech here because there’s not much that’s really transforming the way people interact with their money or make financial decisions.”

0 comments on “‘If you don’t offer an experience you’re not relevant’: Why banks need to be at SXSW”

The Customer Effect

Gen Z’s relationship with money is complicated: New research on Gen Z’s debt, investments, and financial literacy

  • Gen Z's relationship with finance is complicated. Some of their habits make them seem wise beyond their years and others.. not so much.
  • 41% of Gen Z report having $2000 in debt or lower. At the same time 19% are unaware of their credit scores.
Rabab Ahsan | November 01, 2023
Modern Marketing, Podcasts

Marketing financial services to Gen Z with Step’s CJ MacDonald and Visa’s Ruben Salazar

  • FIs are beginning to wake up to the importance of Gen Z as an emerging customer. But they don't necessarily know how to reach them and what to say.
  • We speak with Visa's Ruben Salazar and Step's CJ MacDonald about what's working in marketing to the young generation as part of our podcast series on Gen Z.
Zachary Miller | September 12, 2023
The Customer Effect

‘We don’t make that much money on them’: The opportunities and gaps in banking with Gen Z

  • While Gen Z is estimated to have $360 billion in disposable income, only 33% of them are using a financial provider. 
  • David Donovan, EVP of Publicis Sapient, talks about the opportunity Gen Z represents for FIs and why they are failing at capturing the demographic's attention.
Rabab Ahsan | June 30, 2023
Modern Marketing

Breaking the fourth wall: Robinhood’s foray into publishing, and how financial publishers work to maintain independence

  • Robinhood has announced the launch of its publishing arm, Sherwood.
  • The news raises questions about timing as well as how to maintain independence as a publisher running on an ad/sponsorship model.
Rabab Ahsan | June 13, 2023
The Customer Effect

How are consumer habits and spending changing due to economic turbulence?

  • Economic turbulence is changing consumer spending.
  • 66% of people say that the current economic situation is making them reconsider how much they put aside for their emergency fund, while others are pushing away travel plans and dipping into their 401k.
Rabab Ahsan | April 27, 2023
More Articles