Arguably, the internet has surpassed traditional media in terms of its ability to shape brands. People now spend more time on the internet than they do watching TV. They are seeking consolidated and trustworthy content and are actively TV ad-skipping in preference for accessing, sharing and rating information online. The level of involvement in consuming online content is high and fund members already have a positive disposition towards the web, which aids funds in building their brands. Online is a strong medium to build brand because of this high engagement and relevance, and its lower cost to gain exposure in highly targeted places through its viral nature.

Online impacts brands through social networking (Twitter, Facebook), blogs, forums, wikis, online gaming, video and websites. There are both heroes that work to build your brand online and villains that seek to weaken it. And in the background, branding power is moving away from the funds to the very members they serve.

The four superheroes of online branding are P2P, communities, customer-created content and research. Although some are Jekyll and Hyde and have villainous alter egos.

Super funds are progressing from business-to-consumer mass marketing and segmentation down to the ‘segment of one’ through online person-to-person marketing. Online has given funds the ability to have conversations with individuals through social networking, blogs and other online forums. It has also made all fund members publishers in their own right by empowering them to express their views to the world. The internet is the modern day water cooler where people meet to express their opinions. Their opinions are real, raw and carry more credibility than any form of advertising ever will. Word-of-mouth advertising has always been a powerful brand builder for super in the workplace. Now word-of-mouth good news (and bad) travels faster and much wider via the internet.

Online forums can also be used to provide service to members. For example, www.nicoletbank.com uses a blog to visibly assist people with mortgage questions, business loan queries and general finance questions. This clearly demonstrates great service while also getting on with the business of servicing customers.

Fund generated one-on-one communication online is highly personal, relevant and powerful for members. It gives super funds and its employees real faces and personality, which is a major contributor to building trust, the building block of all strong financial services brands.

Don’t relentlessly promote yourself in social media - build a community instead. Would you be friends with someone who talked about themselves all day? Probably not, and online is no different. Find out where your members congregate and help facilitate discussion and add value. If you can’t locate a natural online community, then create one around your members’ common interests and passions. Think about it as an online ‘sponsorship’ in an area of value to your members.

And when generating or responding to content, be authentic and instant (or close to it). People online will tolerate little else.

Missouri bank (www.mobank.com) is building a small business community by connecting small business entrepreneurs, adding small business content and featuring plenty of testimonials from small business customers. www.nikefootball.com is building a soccer community by making soccer stars more ‘accessible’, facilitating soccer discussion forums and offering online technique and training workshops. What communities can you build around your fund or your members?

Customer created content is usually text and video and is real, entertaining, engaging and totally credible. It is also a brilliant way to obtain very effective content cheaply and to engage your member base. Go to www.youtube.com and search on ‘diet coke + mentos’ and see a tribute to diet coke and mentos that has been viewed over 10 million times. Also search on ‘Mac beautiful’ to see a one-person serenade to Apple, viewed nearly two million times. Highly effective content created and distributed for free – a marketers dream!

Social networks are a goldmine of information on your members and your competitors about their ideas, opinions, drivers and problems. The trick is to find (or create) a place where they congregate and to use software to track keywords (including your brand name) and automate it as much as possible.

Also track problems and complaints. These will usually be common issues experienced by other members. So not only can you address any systemic business issues that lead to the problem, you can also resolve these problems to the satisfaction of the specific member making the comment and everyone else who sees it. Liken it to having 100 other members on a conference call listening in to how well you resolve a problem in your call centre. It’s authentic and undeniable proof that you provide great (or not so great) service.

As usual, financial services throws up some challenges not experienced by other industries:

• Low involvement. Advocacy is hard to generate if people aren’t engaged. Member-created content may have to be facilitated by a competition or other form of incentive.
  
• Higher risk. The propensity for negative feedback is higher as people will generally only take the time to comment if they have a problem. But members will have the conversations with or without you anyway. Better that you participate.
  
• Difficult to be ‘authentic’. Authentic online communication is immediate and raw, which is why it is so credible. Regulatory and compliance issues make this difficult and you need highly skilled people to do it well.
  
• Emphasis on brand utility. Make it easy to transact, apply for membership, learn and ask questions. Online delivers ultra-transparency, so you should fix any utility problems you have or you will get slammed by complaints.
  
• Natural communities are hard to find. I was not able to locate a Bank Lovers Association or super fund fanciers club. Create or participate in online communities around your members’ passions/interests.
  

Of course, it’s not all good news. Where there are superheroes, there have to be villains. Online villains are insidiously hijacking brands by impersonating them, trying to steal customers, hurling abuse and hijacking marketing campaigns. And financial services has its fair share of them.

Underminers are disgruntled members and consumer vigilantes who can hurl abuse at your brand from the other side of the world. Social networks and blogs are the weapons of choice, but vigilantes will go all out with dedicated websites, newsletters and even video to slander your brand. Type ‘ihate banks’ into your search engine to find out. Some specific sites include www.ihatebanks.com.au and www.wakeupwalmart.com, and there are also thousands of blogs containing complaints about service and abusing brands.

Disgruntled employees can also cause considerable brand damage. For example an ex-Starbucks employee made a damning video about their labour practices that has been seen almost 100,000 times on Youtube. Part of Starbucks brand is that it looks after its employees. The online video directly disputes this. Who do you believe: the big company talking about itself or a peer?

• Phishing - typically in the form of SPAM emails to your members trying to steel their personal and login details and credit card information. Most major Australian bank customers get hit frequently. How many of us trust emails from our banks anymore?
  
• Cybersquatting - the unauthorised registration of domain-names featuring a brand name. This is a cheap and simple method to take advantage of another’s off-line brand reputation. Examples are www.americajexpress.com, www.wikipedi.com and www.mikerowsoft.com
  
• Traffic diversion - occurs when any third party places ads for your trademarks (company name, products, etc.) on the search engines. These ads dilute your brand and divert traffic away from your web assets. Do a search on your brand name and see who else is using it in pay-per-click or natural search results. Most offences occur in the www.yahoo.com search engine.
  

Cheating is where the villain-within fakes social media entries to make their company look good. Walmarting across America is a famous case where Walmart funded ‘independent’ reviews of many of its stores. The temptation to impersonate a customer to defend your fund or make your fund look good is high, but you’ll get caught. People can smell an e-rat and there are free services that identify when companies are posting content about themselves including www.wikiscanner.virgil.gr.

With so many avenues for villains to attack, how do you defend your fund? There are millions of websites and conversations to monitor so funds must employ software to automate monitoring. Tools like www.reputationdefender.com, www.tweetbeep.com and www.radian6.com monitor the web and report by exception all conversations and content about your brand.

When you need to participate in a conversation to defend your fund, respond quickly and keep it authentic, short and be passive. Otherwise you run the risk of being seen as overly controlling and manipulative. If need be, ask for some time to respond, but be sure to get back to them when you promised you would.

Keep customers informed of any scams via your website. Deal with any complaints really, really well. The world is watching how well you handle it and unlike a phone call, it will live forever online.

The more advocates you have the better as they will come to your defence when the underminers start hurling complaints about your fund. People do not expect the read only positive things about any organisation. They do however, expect to see a reasonable balance of comments in your favour. Case-in-point is Dell Computers that allows the general public to rate all of its products on its own website. This ultra-transparency brings risks, but more importantly it creates high credibility and trust and facilitates people buying equipment online, sight unseen.

Funds are slowly losing control of their brands to members.

In the past, funds completely controlled the message and the media in all communications. Moving forward, members will have much more control over the message in a dominant media (web) and funds (at best) will provide some guidance to where things are going. Raw and real member created content is highly credible and sought after. Members will read this real content while ignoring structured advertising content.

Members will also have views on how you should run your fund and what you should stand for. What will you do when your members start to tell you how to position your brand?

Although, it’s ok to let your members take more control of your brand, providing you have Superman in your corner…

It really is time to get back to the basics of good branding. A brand makes a promise and keeps that promise to its customers. A strong brand offers clarity to members as to what your fund stands for and how it will behave. Superman is all about making a worthwhile brand promise and keeping it.

All marketing activities must be built on a clear brand promise. A fund also needs to totally align its operations so that every touch-point with members delivers the brand promise, time after time. Every touch-point with a member is a chance to build your brand or weaken it, and the number of online touch-points is growing fast. And if you fail to live up to your brand promise, members will no longer tell 10 people over the next year, they’ll tell 1,000 people online tomorrow.

Most importantly, breaking a promise destroys trust, the very building block of all financial services brands. No fund can afford to lose the trust of its members.

As super funds integrate online branding into their total marketing mix, they should do all they can to leverage online strategies, protect their brands online, let members have their say and strive for total brand alignment across their business. With an ever more web-savvy membership developing across all age groups, this is increasingly how strong brands will be built and maintained.

As your members take more control of your brand, make sure you have made a worthwhile brand promise and that you diligently keep it.

Bruce Stafford