Hijack

Joining an existing conversation is exponentially more efficient than starting your own.

Andrew Carrier

Nov 03, 2024

Read on to learn why:

① Good PR demands creativity.

② Press coverage depends on relevancy and strong, succinct opinions.

③ The world’s best banker has had enough of regulation.

④ The UK’s central bank is pushing its commercial banks to innovate faster.

⑤ Leveraging reliable customer data is the key to fostering loyalty.

⑥ It pays to think for yourself, not to get swept away by style, reputation or hype.

⑦ Google is finally facing real competition in search.

📸 But first, flashback to International Women's Day when I said it’s time to drop the platitudes and take action. This week, even Helena Morrissey gave up.

What's new

Nearly half of fintech founders mull leaving UK ahead of crunch Budget, CityAM reported this week.

“According to an annual report conducted by industry group Fintech Founders, some 39 per cent of the 450 leading entrepreneurs surveyed had expressed concerns over a ‘poor’ and ‘awful’ regulatory environment. Half of the fintech founders surveyed between July and September said they believe their regulatory concerns are often overlooked, with others stating there is a lack of government understanding as to what support the fintech sector needs to grow.
“Some 43 per cent said they have already considered relocating out of the country, with a majority naming access to funding as a key decision-maker.”
“A number of industry leaders within Fintech Founder’s network also fired warning signs to the new government earlier this month that hiking capital gains tax in the upcoming Budget risks losing top talent. An open letter to the Chancellor, signed by 66 fintech founders and chief executives, said that while members of the group ‘do not want to relocate, founders are increasingly considering leaving the UK’.”

Why it matters

My boss is a fintech founder. He’s also a foreigner who long ago chose to make the UK his home. As a relatively niche, relatively small fintech, we can’t rely on mass market brand awareness and the value of our products is a challenge to convey to all but a specialist audience. So, we sometimes struggle to persuade mainstream journalists to cover us. This story matters because it proved to be the impetus our PR programme needed to deliver one of its most successful weeks ever in terms of press clippings.

We have a deeply held conviction that innovation - particularly the shift to digital finance - is key to securing the UK’s global leadership position in the financial markets of the future. As a London-based fintech, championing the UK is core to our brand. So, this story of fintech founders complaining about capital gains tax and threatening to leave the country felt like the antithesis of our own stance. And our CEO was happy to so say publicly.

① That’s how we were able to took a more creative approach to our PR this week. We knew the Budget would dominate the news cycle so, armed with strong, opinionated quotes from our CEO, we set about pitching our reaction to any journalist writing about it. That allowed us to contribute to the coverage in a meaningful way, with a message that was positive and reinforced our brand narrative.

The result was a slew of coverage that belies our size as a company and culminated in a wrap-up story published by CityAM yesterday, written by the same journalist who had written the original ‘doom and gloom’ piece, that was upbeat about the UK and showcased all of our CEO’s quotes.

What to do about it

Take action

② This story offers you three lessons:

Think creatively: Avoid the temptation to frame your PR tactics in terms of getting journalists to write about you and your products. Good journalists working for reputable titles won’t unless it’s truly newsworthy. Instead think more broadly about how your brand can contribute to a larger debate.
Hijack shamelessly: It is exponentially easier to get a journalist to write about you when you offer them valuable input to a story they’re already writing than to convince them to write a different story. Join an existing conversation instead of starting your own.
Opine strongly: It’s easier of course when you work for a smaller, privately-owned company than when you’re representing a large, regulated organisation but, regardless, always strive to offer a strong opinion, ideally one that goes against the grain of conventional thinking. Journalists - and their readers - gravitate to counterarguments.

Get help

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

'Time to fight back:' Jamie Dimon hammers away on regulation

③ The world’s best banker has had enough of regulation.

Jamie Dimon. Source: American Banker, 28 October 2024

“Jamie Dimon pushed back forcefully against what he described as an ‘onslaught’ of regulation during a fireside chat Monday at the American Bankers Association's Annual Convention.”
“Dimon spent more than two-thirds of his 30-minute appearance discussing how the banking industry is regulated — not only during the Biden administration, but also dating back to the Obama era. The specific topics included the Basel III endgame capital rules, interchange fee rules established by the so-called Durbin Amendment, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new open banking rule, FDIC insurance reforms and banks' role in advocacy.”
"‘Banks are under such pressure, and a lot of banks — the truth is — are unwilling to fight with regulators because they'll come after you,’ Dimon said. ‘It's gross. Time to fight back. We don't want to get involved in litigation just to make a point, but I think if you're in a knife fight, you better damn well bring a knife, and that's where we are’."

TECHNOLOGY

If tokenised deposits don’t progress, Bank of England likely to launch CBDC

④ The UK’s central bank is pushing its commercial banks to innovate faster.

Andrew Bailey. Source: Ledger Insights, 28 October 2024

“For retail payments, Governor Bailey thinks the Bank of England should be indifferent to whether payments use central bank money such as a retail CBDC or commercial bank money. He’s quite keen to maintain the status quo in that most retail payments are in commercial bank money. Doing so doesn’t interfere with fractional reserve banking and the availability of credit in the economy. Regarding digital innovation such as tokenised deposits, he thinks commercial banks are where this should happen.”
“However, he added, ‘If for some reason innovation is unlikely to happen, then the central banks have to decide whether they are the only game in town. For me, this justifies why we must continue to prepare for retail CBDC. We have not yet seen enough evidence that the innovation will happen in commercial banks’.”
“Governor Bailey noted that on occasion, infrastructures and technologies have failed to incentivise innovation. Sometimes that relates to the concentration of market power. Hence the ongoing exploration of CBDC. ‘That is not my preferred outcome, but not one that we should rule out’.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Why personalisation is non-negotiable in today’s banking market

⑤ Leveraging reliable customer data is the key to fostering loyalty.

“Customers in banking, financial services, and insurance are no longer satisfied with one-size-fits-all solutions; they demand digital experiences tailored to their unique needs. McKinsey reports that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions. Organisations that meet this expectation are more likely to build lasting trust and not only satisfy and retain their customers but also significantly enhance their loyalty.”
“Despite widespread recognition of the need for personalization in banking, a significant gap remains. Over a third of marketers in this sector battle low engagement and retention rates, often due to poor data management that hampers the effective use of customer data and leads to missed opportunities for meaningful engagement.”
“Institutions need secure, painless digital data systems that provide a complete view of customer interactions. Smart data tools are crucial for effective personalisation. By analysing individual interactions or the collective journey of a customer segment, financial institutions can simplify complex processes like loan applications, insurance claims, and investment transactions.”

WILDCARD

Revenge of the Tipping Point — Malcolm Gladwell’s long-awaited follow-up

⑥ It pays to think for yourself, not to get swept away by style, reputation or hype.

Source: The Financial Times, 30 October 2024

“I very much enjoy Gladwell’s work. It feels like it should be true. […] The problem, though, is that essentially all of this stuff doesn’t pass the smell test. […] Reading Revenge of the Tipping Point, I found myself thinking like Fox Mulder in The X Files: I want to believe! I want to believe in the various catchy bits of social science that Gladwell suggests are rules.”
“But the longer the book goes on, and the more widely it ranges, the more likely it becomes that one of his case studies will collide with an area you already know about. And when Gladwell’s perfectly formed case studies come from areas you know about, it is harder to go with the flow, and harder, afterwards, not to ask yourself whether the whole book is built on similarly shaky ground.”
“The problem with Revenge of the Tipping Point is that as it ranges across so many fields that eventually the reader will reach their own tipping point, and realise that this charismatically delivered set of folksy scientific-sounding observations about the world is little more than well-put-together quackery.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Richard Waters, the FT’s west coast editor, on the AI search wars:

Richard Waters. Source: The Financial Times, 31 October 2024

“Google’s role as the dominant, general-purpose search engine looks as secure as ever. But as search spreads to a new generation of AI-powered chatbots, assistants and agents, it can no longer count on its audience’s undivided attention.”

Don’t settle for marketing.

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Wishing you a productive week,

P.S. Sometimes the most unassuming options prove the most pleasant surprises.