Can you imagine yourself as a turtle? An object? A person of a different nationality? A fictitious character? A version of you in a completely different climate? What would you look like? What characteristics would make it clearly you? Now … imagine you have to mold this image into clay. That’s the task we were challenged with in this month’s Creative Caffeine session at FMS.
Leading the session was Nick Long, the agency’s design director and a longtime artist whose focus is on contemporary realism. While many of us who gathered together have creative roles here at the agency, I can tell you that molding clay is not necessarily our forte. Nick implied that no experience was necessary for the task, and that the point was to express our creativity in a different medium than we traditionally use, like the trusty pen and paper, or computer programs.
Nick proceeded to show us some impressive clay figures created by his son when he was very young. Several of us were thinking, and Amber shared, “Nick, you could have shown those to us after we’re done.” He told us there was only one rule: to create some kind of version or alter ego of ourselves. How it manifested was up to us. With a spread of clay and utensils before us, not to mention our vivid imaginations, we began tearing pieces off, shaping them and bringing our creations to life.
The Creative Caffeine group working diligently on their individual claymations.
A little time later, the focused silence lifted and we looked around in amazement at all of the unique claymations (see pictures below). It was great fun breaking out of our typical routines to create in a different way. We walked away with a refreshed perspective on being creative, and the energy resulting from the experience spread throughout the agency. No matter what your challenge—whether it be creating an ad, a website or some kind of guerilla marketing—the boundaries of creativity are only as confined as we make them.
Nick created a claymation of himself somewhere in the cold. He is all bundled up!
Laurie created our very own FMS mascot!
Bill created a neat little character that represented him when he was growing up - big ears, fro in high school, washboard abs, and no arms intentionally (because he said he wasn't perfect, but he really is!)
Amber created "Super Amber." Enough said.
As our copywriter, Jen created an erasable pen with characteristics that reflected her own personality - red hair, green eyes, Florida Gator color, and a little sass/personality reflected her her arms.
By Laurie Campbell Pannell, Creative Partner
Ours is not a static industry. Times change, banking styles evolve, technologies advance and our changing customers propel our banks forward. And some bank brands even help drive this perpetual change—those that evolve with the times.
Your bank’s brand is influential—from affecting a customer’s experience in the lobby to motivating community-wide involvement on Facebook. The new year is the perfect time to resolve to be the most relevant bank brand in the market.
In that spirit, why not approach the new year with a renewed sense of purpose? We are not only helping to build our banks, communities, businesses and families, but we are helping to evolve the banking landscape as we know it. It’s a great mission!
Your bank has the ability to educate its market about the latest banking technologies and help move the community forward on its path in the year 2012. Just as community banks cannot afford to fall behind the national banks, communities cannot long afford to fall behind the times with the rest of the world.
However, some view a bank and its brand as unchanging—an unmoving pillar in the community. Yet great leaders are anything but static. They grow in wisdom and increase their ability to lead with every new challenge they surmount.
It’s the same for most all industries, companies, products and even individuals. Credibility only increases when we change with the times. For example, why do some music bands have the ability to turn out hits for decades, while others are just a flash in the pan? They evolve. As Robert Plant, the lead rocker in the iconic 70s band, Led Zeppelin, explains, “The thing is, how much do people really want to learn? Some people get in a groove and they stay with it indefinitely, and what starts off as a great moment of explosive passion can end up as cabaret 25, 30 years later.” After selling more than 200 albums, Plant could have spent the second half of his career simply touring for all his old fans. In contrast, Plant has reinvented himself by giving his voice a new genre. He took the best traits of his brand and gave them new life in the realm of blues and earthier sounds and began collaborating with new artists. His relevance is ongoing because his brand is continually evolving.
This year, as you and your team prepare for the year ahead, take a look at your bank’s personality and brand to see if it is as relevant as it could be. Are you still mailing out paper statements when the rest of the world has gone electronic? Still consider your website as a side door to your bank, when today’s consumer considers it your front door? Like the woman who still wears a beehive because it looked so fabulous in her teens, we may think a great brand must remain exactly the same to maintain its success. But when we get a “new do,” so to speak, we demonstrate our awareness of changing styles and our ability to adapt, update and remain at the top of our game.
By Sean Hockenbery, Director of Client Services and Operations
It is no secret that the recent recession paired with the rapid advancement of technology has completely altered the banking landscape. In addition to dramatic technological changes, regulations have also changed, and will continue to do so. But the greatest change has been with customers. Bank customers today are much different than just a few years ago. They’re much more aware of their financial situation, what products and services are available, and maybe more important, what is being offered by competitors.
Customers have the control. This was proven by the mass uproar over debit card fees that led big banks to actually reverse the decision to charge the fee in the first place.
This leads us to the commonly asked question: How do banks—especially community banks—stay relevant? It’s going to take a fundamental shift in thinking. It’s going to take really understanding the lifestyles of those in the marketplace, and changing to meet them where they live and how they live.
No longer is it going to be about getting customers to the branch, which I can personally attest to. Having worked in a bank branch about two miles from my current office, I have not set foot in the branch itself in months, if at all this year, to do my banking. This is because the value banks provide to customers is no longer solely about transactions. Banks need to provide value by being informative, providing tools to manage finances and adapting to customers’ lifestyles—anytime, anywhere and however they want. To stay relevant, banks will need to create a complete user experience through all channels—traditional and digital.
The analogy I like to use for this shift in philosophy is to think about your bank like an iPhone. We need not be telling ourselves that it is enough to offer and promote online banking, mobile banking and e-statements. The goal is to think bigger. Think about the way your customers live. At the core, an iPhone is a phone. But how often do you see Apple promoting the iPhone’s basic phone functionality? Instead, the iPhone is all about the lifestyle of the consumer. It is a personal music collection, a photo gallery, a camera, a social media center, a weather reporter, a financial management tool, an Internet browser, etc. Or as one person I recently asked said, “My iPhone is everything I need in my life.” As bankers, we need to think less about the individual products that we offer and become the iPhone of our clients’ financial management system.
With nearly 80 million “Gen-Yers” in the U.S. who have spending power in excess of $200 billion annually, the need to position your bank to meet their lifestyles is greater than ever. It is said that by 2015, up to 50 percent of the U.S. population will bank via mobile devices. Does your bank create a maximum user experience via mobile devices? Many people do not realize that iPhones and iPads do not support the Flash technology used by so many banks for the primary advertisements on the home page of the bank’s website. I encourage you to view your bank’s website on one of these devices and ask yourself, “Would I bank with my institution?”
By the way, it is not just the Gen-Yers that we need to think about today. Baby-boomers are becoming more technologically savvy than many of us ever thought we would see. Over the recent Thanksgiving holiday, I learned that my parents, my aunt and my in-laws have all decided that they aren’t going to use their computers anymore—they have all bought iPads.
It is time to step back, think beyond individual products and services, and position your bank as a relevant institution that reaches consumers where and how they live.