We aim to help marketers offer the best customer experience they can and continue to build their brand equity during this time of crisis. Key trends this week: Social topics take centre stage
Our UK Retail Banking Dashboard provides a weekly snapshot of trends that you can interrogate. We invite you to click on the link below and take a look around the data. The link will give you direct access to the dashboard, no log-ins are required but please use Google Chrome and access via a laptop. One feature to highlight is the ability to click on data points to view the underlying comments for the experiences, so if response to advertising is positive, you can click to see what people are saying about it.
Social topics take centre stage
Advertising experience reach in the category remains low, with Paid Experience Reach being at 31% this week. This is not only considerably lower our Benchmark period (13 Feb - 11 March 2020) of 44%, but an even a bigger difference with the Reach figures this time last year of 54% (September 2019).
When looking at individual banks, we do see that Halifax managed to increase its Paid Experience Reach this week, with its supportive ‘Wherever’ campaign performing well. However, over the past month, we see it is Lloyds that has created the most positive advertising experiences, with the combination of the iconic Black Horses ad and the Internet Banking ad with Giles and Maureen.
The levels of Earned Experience Reach remained quite stable over the last few weeks, but we have seen a shift in receptivity towards certain topics. Whereas a couple of weeks ago the news was more dictated by the negative financial impact of the pandemic on the retail banking sector, we now see more sensitivity towards social topics. We see this through negative news on job losses and selective services, such as reduced branch hours for TSB:
" Just catching up on the news of the day and read that TSB were shutting their branches at 14:00 making it impossible for some to get into the branch. Really mad how are those who don't have the time to get to the branch carry out transactions not everyone has or does online banking." TSB | Online | Very Negative | Much less likely to choose | Neutral.
In contrast, the efforts that banks are making on inclusivity and diversity are being noticed and received positivity:
"On you tube and came across co operatives bank support Manchester Pride. Made me feel positive as being gay, nice to know that they are inclusive. Positive." Co-operative Bank | Social Media | Very Positive | Slightly more likely to choose | Very Relevant
In summary
- Low levels of Paid Experience Reach.
- Lloyds created the most positive experiences over the last month.
- The social impact of banks is more present.
Contributor:
Mark Thompson, Experience Director & Kaat Defreyne, Senior Experience Executive