Event horizon

Standing out at big conferences depends on sass, not spend.

Feb 19, 2023

📸 First, flashback to January when I told you DeadHappy was dead wrong. This week it seems the Advertising Standards Authority agrees. Flashback further to last year when I told you the metaverse was a waste of time and money. This week, the FT’s Jemima Kelly comes to the same conclusion.

👉🏻 Now, read on to learn why:

① Adding value, being clear, and staying focused are key for smaller brands.

② Exhibiting isn’t the best way to get attention at large events.

③ The Government is struggling to define a post-Brexit identity for the City.

④ “It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me,” say European regulators.

⑤ Your internal comms head should be supporting your CFO.

⑥ All managers can learn from the companies at the top of the productivity heap.

⑦ Consultants lack the motivation necessary to deliver long-term solutions.

What's new

I’m spending the weekend with old friends in Brussels so, my apologies dear reader, I took a shortcut to your news: I’m repurposing an interview I gave earlier this week to The Fintech Marketing Hub:

Source: The Fintech Marketing Hub, 14 February 2023

In short:

“Quant is a London-based blockchain platform that provides organisations and governments with the infrastructure to connect their products with multiple blockchains and efficiently transfer data between systems.”
“Last year, Quant took part in Sibos, one of the world's largest financial services networking events. Organised and hosted annually by the global payments network provider SWIFT, Sibos brings together thousands of business leaders, industry experts, decision-makers and vendors from across the entire financial ecosystem.”
“Rather than taking the conventional path to events marketing and signing up for one of Sibos's expensive exhibitor packs, Quant's team decided to be a bit more creative and strategic with their marketing budget. So, they went on to attend the event as delegates and focused their marketing efforts and spending on building and releasing their own multi-channel Sibos content campaign.”

Why it matters

When you line us up next to the behemoths of the financial world that make up the bulk of Sibos exhibitors, Quant is a relatively unknown brand. But that was just one part of our challenge. The other element is that our business - making blockchain for finance easy – is not well understood. Indeed, there’s still a healthy degree of scepticism amongst some of the Sibos audience about whether it’s even ‘a thing’. We’re effectively creating a market from scratch. And, as if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, there’s a final fly in the ointment: too often when we say “blockchain” people hear “crypto”. We need to disassociate ourselves from an application of blockchain technology that we’re not involved in.

① So, when we thought about our strategy for Sibos, we knew it had to rest on three pillars: 1) Education; 2) Positioning and 3) Punching above our weight.

Education meant avoiding a salesy approach in favour of relying on valuable editorial content that genuinely informed, inspired and entertained. If we didn’t contribute to the Sibos dialogue in a meaningful way, we’d missed the mark.
Positioning implied claiming our ground, articulating exactly what makes Quant different. We landed on the concept of ‘institutional’ digital assets. We’re not involved nor interested in crypto or NFTs but rather grown-up, real-world applications of blockchain technology for regulated financial services firms – whether they be in payments or capital markets.
Punching above our weight was a recognition that we simply don’t yet have the brand equity or the marketing budgets of the Deutsche Banks or IBMs of this world. So, we had to be very focused in terms of where we would direct our efforts for the biggest impact.

What to do about it

Take action

The old cliché about Sibos being ‘the world’s premier financial services event’ holds true. If you’re in banking operations, payments, or asset servicing, Sibos is absolutely essential.

For us, the key benefit was raising awareness and what I call ‘meeting efficiency’ (i.e. I can’t think of anywhere else where you could meet with so many relevant, qualified prospects in such a short timeframe and all under one roof).

② I would question whether you need to commit to the huge expense of exhibiting though. This obviously depends on your size and objectives but, speaking from our experience, not being tied to a stand actually gave us agility and flexibility.

Get help

Visit InMarketing, my resource library for leaders in finance or technology who want to innovate, interact and influence.
Join the InMarketing community, either on Twitter or on Substack (you’ll need to download the Substack app and head to the chat tab). Either way, you can ask questions of me and fellow senior marketing practitioners.

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

The plan to revive the City of London

③ The Government is struggling to define a post-Brexit identity for the City.

Source: The Financial Times, 15 February 2023

“The proposals ministers have brought together under the ‘Edinburgh reforms’ are the most significant shift for Britain’s financial services policy in more than two decades. Some have dubbed them Big Bang 2.0 in a nod to an earlier wave of financial deregulation. They aim to rip up many EU-derived rules to make the City competitive against global rival financial capitals and range across banking, insurance, brokerages, exchanges and investors. The aim is to redraw the regulatory regime for asset classes ranging from cryptocurrency to infrastructure and equities.”
“The initiative comes at a critical time. London’s position as a financial capital — supported by advantages in language, timezone, legal system and skilled workers — had been boosted by its role as a gateway to the EU. But the financial services sector was largely left out of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and EU, signed in late 2020, meaning that firms lost the ability to serve EU markets under equivalent rules.”
“Not everyone is happy about the prospect of unpicking some of the rules put in place after the global financial crisis and various mis-selling scandals. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has warned Sunak against going too far with post-crisis deregulation, while some City executives argue that many global financial firms favour London precisely because of its high standards of governance.”

TECHNOLOGY

European Commission launches a blockchain regulatory sandbox

④ “It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me,” say European regulators to DLT providers.

“The European Commission has launched a new regulatory sandbox for innovative use cases involving distributed ledger technologies. The sandbox is funded by the Digital Europe Programme and will run from 2023 to 2026. It was designed to support 20 projects each year, including public sector use cases on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, with projects being chosen based on calls for expression of interest.
“The primary objective of the European Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox is to support the cross-border dialogue with and between regulators and supervisors, and between companies or public authorities. The sandbox will also enable supervisors to improve their knowledge of DLT-related technologies, and learned lessons will be shared between participating regulators, thus allowing the Commission to identify best practices.”
“DLT can support regulatory technologies and aid public authorities in their fight against fraud in global supply chains and protect verifiable credentials against counterfeiting. Non-personal data can be exchanged by companies to train algorithms or to create unique digital replicas they buy, sell or insure in the mobility, energy and manufacturing sectors. Moreover, financial actors are expected to utilise DLT with the goal of minimising the cost of trading securities.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Why finance chiefs need storytelling skills in a crisis

⑤ Your internal comms head should be supporting your CFO.

“Establishing a rapport with the rest of the organisation is a very different experience from that of communicating with the CFO’s traditional audience in the investment community. It’s likely to require simplifying certain messages to help everyone in the business comprehend how it’s planning to weather the storm.”
“When finance chiefs are forming their internal communication plans, they must focus not only on what information they’re going to share but also on how they’ll deliver it. Nadine Pichelot, senior VP of finance at software developer Anaplan, believes that CFOs need to become storytellers, finding a way to deliver a narrative behind the numbers in a way that’s fair to their audience.”
“How a CFO conducts themselves from day to day inside the organisation also has a huge impact on confidence among the workforce. A finance chief’s general demeanour and interactions with other employees can convey a stronger message than anything they might say during formal update sessions.”

WILDCARD

What the most productive companies do differently

⑥ All managers can learn from the companies at the top of the productivity heap.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 16 February 2023

They capture value from digitisation (i.e. set bold business goals enabled by technology.)
They invest in intangibles (e.g. R&D, intellectual property, and the capabilities of your workforce.)
They build a future-ready workforce (i.e. either attract top talent or invest in existing employees’ skills.)
They adopt a systems approach (i.e. look for opportunities to access new markets or collaborate creatively with stakeholders.)

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Mariana Mazzucato, economist at University College London, on consultancies hobbling governments’ ability to be economic motors:

Mariana Mazzucato. Source: The Financial Times, 13 February 2023

“These are private companies, the McKinseys and the Deloittes, that have no expertise in the areas that they’re advising in.”

Don’t settle for marketing.

Strive for InMarketing: innovate, interact, influence.

Wishing you a productive week,

P.S. I had lunch at Les Brasseries Georges on Friday. I have been coming here since I was a kid. It hasn’t changed in 40 years…because it doesn’t need to.